


One and Only

by Mer_des_Miroirs



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Books, F. Nietzsche, Logic, M/M, Philosophy, Psychology, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2013-08-22
Packaged: 2017-11-19 18:21:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 17
Words: 52,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/576271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mer_des_Miroirs/pseuds/Mer_des_Miroirs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is no good or evil. There are books. There is a book, that Harry falls in love with. Many faces to a man, who wrote it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Difference

**Author's Note:**

> "One and Only", originally one of the three ideas I had regarding the "Harry Potter" and not my favourite one. On a whim, I began to write down the few scenes I had – and I had only the few scenes, such as to entertain my friend. As I still lacked an AO3 account, they – the first five chapters – were done for tumblr and in a such a way, as to have them finished in one go. 
> 
> As the story began to present itself as a serious work with feels and backgrounds and philosophy overlay, as I moved here, the chapters began to grow as began my need to incorporate new information and zoom in on the presented world. As consequence, there is a definite style break after the first few chapters, which I should probably try to smooth out, some day. 
> 
> So far, I favour to focus on writing new chapters, as from experience, there is nothing as successful in making me discontinue a story, as the overzealous editing I am rather prone to. Therefore, the motto for this story – As quick updates and as little editing as possible. Bear with me and I shall, hopefully, finish it, and finish sooner than later.
> 
> P.S. It was never meant to be an easy reading experience. It generally fries my brain to write it (yet alone read the supplementary materials), I don’t know why it should not scorch yours. xD
> 
> My regards and love, 
> 
> Hikari (Mer des Miroirs).

It was only a street away and in the general direction of where ever his legs carried themselves, when the garden was cared for and aunt Petunia not looking.

It was a two-storey building kept in the pristine white, glass doors. People walked in and out, and Harry looked at the pictures in the showcase, that adorned books. The imagery was of children in beautiful dresses, unusual places and playing animals. A few glittered in the sun light, other had shapes about to come outside. Harry traced unknown letters with his fingers against the air against the window as not to stain thick glass and waved at the busy white hare clutching a pocket watch.

Pictures changed as the sun was hot, and again with the falling leaves, and would change with a pumpkin eye and a hollow smile. There was a girl with light silver wings as if she could fly, and Harry wonders about the world that the birds have. Another one with a half a body and half a tail and Harry knows she is a fish. A fish-girl that lives underwater.

In the park nearby there is a tiny pond, deep and murky. Harry hides his arm inside and has no arm. Underwater, he decides, is as cold and dark-dirty as within the cupboard, where Harry lives. He thinks up a story of a little fish-girl that turns a real human with two legs and all, and comes up to live with her uncle and aunt and has a nice bed and food too.

He watches how sky blue and grass green the water is, flower red and sun yellow surrounding plants and silver the fishes, how happy the girl. How colourful her book, but outside is a cold grey and wet rain and Harry shivers within torn shirt, under the porch. For once Harry wants to know, he wants to know if the little girl must to become normal to become real to be.

He pushes the glass door, anxious to see other pictures that hide in her book, and the door is open. Then it is a big place, where no one looks at Harry. There are shelves with books everywhere, and a low table with cushioned seats. Forlornly, Harry pets the dark curtain that removes Harry from showcase. 

A boy, neat and elder occupies the table’s end. He stands up, chooses a book or two from the shelves, grips with a casual hand, sits down, opens, leafs through. Some he gathers to a pile, dismisses others. Strikes conversation –

“Mum is up in the adult section. She always takes long”.

Harry sees a staircase. Harry sees books, books in a pile. “Do you get all of them?” he asks. The boy nods, because the “children limit” is twenty, he only has six. Harry has not one, but Harry is poor and an orphan and there must be a different “Harry limit”. But Harry is curious - 

“What are them about? Are there books about the Underwater?”

The boy leads Harry to a specific shelf, two turns to the right and three steps down and lets Harry touch. Harry revises the little fish-girl’s adventure. She plays tag with white sharks, blue dolphins. Gathers pearls from voluble seashells. Sleeps in a coral reef cave where everything is an alive rainbow. Hides in a forest of salty weed.

Harry sits on the floor, surrounded by books, when a woman comes. She insists it is six now and the place closes. She asks for Harry’s library card – and his mother, and what books he wishes to take home?

Harry asks for the opening hours.  He has no card, mother or home.

But he wants to return tomorrow, and surprisingly - he can.

***

First, Harry traces stories by connecting pictures by filling dots with may-it-be names and do something actions. Many a time he is distraught because things do not happen this way. How can one sleep for so long, that there is a great forest surrounding castle. Unless it is not the same castle. The princess was moved to the other castle, as she slept. They must have used a helicopter. And sleeping pills, because helicopters are very loud. Harry has seen it once, on TV. Aunt Petunia has sleeping pills. Why would they make two identical castles? And prince rides a horse through the scary forest, instead of using a helicopter too.

Stories make no sense.

Stories hide within letters.

“Excuse me, what is this letter…? For I forgot…”

The girl looks down on Harry, everyone does. Harry bites trembling lip, plans retreat. The girl sighs, shows Harry to a spelling book. “Tree, Table, Toy” she points to simple pictures. “That’s a “T”.

Harry learns that there are books for everything. Even to how understand books.

Then, Harry learns that books are everything, as they are not limited by the laws of real and of time. There are stories about boys like Dudley and boys so much not Dudley and there are stories that would be about Harry, if Harry was more special still.

Lastly, Harry learns, that even though there are books about everything, there is hardly a book that gives exactly the same answer to the same question.

When Harry is older and attends primary school before vanishing to library before returning to a place, where are chores and hunger, and harsh physical words, teacher insists that the sky is blue, big dog wants to help little boy, that God is eternal. Harry thinks of reflections and invisibility, and instinct. Times long past.  

Whereas the world remains virtually the same, it is Harry’s knowledge about the world that changes, hence how he understands the world.

In the end, there is no right or wrong, no good or evil and nothing true. What aunt Petunia deems a sufficient living conditions for a child, depends on the child. She is a loving mother and a caring wife. Dudley is a precious best friend, and Vernon a responsible adult. Not to Harry.  

Because Harry is the Harry Potter, and a whole another category and beyond definitions.

Boy, freak, ungrateful brat, a do-it-all - and technically a nephew.

Because there are only opinions and the power, or the lack thereof, to make them real.  


	2. Stage

Owls are the messengers from the Otherworld.

Wind whistled through the gaps in the wooden walls, filthy windows. It swept from an empty fireplace, mingled with Cousin Dudley’s snores, unsurprisingly exhausted enough to fall asleep on the tawdry, moth-eaten sofa. Harry in turn was preoccupied with a lost task of finding a comfortable position on the smelly wet floor; more so listen to the rolls of thunder, and importantly - counting down time. Ten minutes, five minutes, ten - three – two-one – SMASH. A giant stood in the broken doorway, and it was finally here, his…

It took Harry about one minute to tear the letter open and read through it trice. Then, he returned to the living room, forwarding Marge’s postcard and Vernon’s bill and a question painted in green ink on thick parchment, just the same colour as his aunt’s face then – “Honestly, what is this about?”

They were sent out of the room Dudley and he; Harry’s cousin pressing a needy ear against the key hole, little good it did him. At latest the even, as Harry was presented with a phenomenally improved room arrangements, Harry had to conclude that indeed, magic is real.

The next morning a letter came. Poor Dudley even though playing the courier boy and wielding a Smelting stick with a well-practiced mastery, as Harry is a less willing witness of, he still never makes it past the address line.

The morning thereafter Harry is woken up by a cacophony of sounds, the direct result of someone not quite a feather putting their foot in their father’s face. Uncle Vernon amusingly so decided to improve his health by a breath of fresh air that sleeping outside guarantees.

As it took all their attention to hide big bad secret from the still oblivious, best-behaved Dudley, but the letters were about ten and incoming from all the funny places, Harry snatched one. Checked that aside from a ridiculously exact address the contents reacted not, and with a smile wide-wide added the culpable piece of information to Aunt Petunia’s mixer to be shred too. Dudley cried.

By the time, Dudley got convinced he could certainly live without his new VCR. Who needs a VCR? “Give it another week”, Harry thought, “And I won’t mind a computer”.

Harry falls a benevolent spectator to an owl army grow in space and extravagance, and his panicking relatives.

By Monday, the Dursleys moved town and then more. Found themselves in a breaking apart shag on a lonely island middle of a raging ocean, and quite outside of their behavioural patterns and certainly out of their mind in their attempt to secure little Harry from falling into what they believe are the abysmal clutches of an evil magical world, it was almost sweet.

Uncle Vernon missed work, Cousin Dudley his collection of TV shows, Aunt Petunia has no woman-next-door, and all for a good for nothing Harry they so wished to dispose of, and is not such a chance?

If Harry shivers on a floor outside of the cupboard floor, are not his relatives suffering from the lack of the feather soft beds too?

Because in the end, uncle Vernon is a man of principle, facing things he would not wish on his only nephew. Not touching?!  

But the show must go on, and Harry counts the strokes until Turning Point.

The Big Rescue led by the Big Rescuer.

No effect without cause.

The less linear the relationship, more hidden factors presumed.

Is it a cruel mastermind all a week torturing the Dursleys, endowing Harry with his long due “revenge”, or… Take it back. They really are into absurd super-flashy arrangements and impressing abused little kids.

 “Anyway Harry”, the giant said – “a very happy birthday to yeh.”

***

“Have you got your own broom?”

“No”

“Play Quidditch at all?”

“No”

“Know what house you’ll be in yet?”

“Ah, but this is the question!” Harry exclaims, embraced by a flying amount of measuring tape as he stood upon a chair at “Madam Malkin’s”, leading his first conversation with a wizarding exemplar of his age, if not the circumstances.

Certainly, this blond boy cannot be any more special than a Harry Potter, the saviour of the all good magical world at the age of one. Harry’s famousness suffices for a spontaneous greet-and-meet session at the “Leaky Cauldron” – a no less famous shabby inn.

It might further account for the reason a Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry favours to waste their galleons on a few hundreds of fancy identical letters they know Harry has not read, instead of presenting Harry with a reasonable adult after a first one failure. Just to think how many burnt sausages could otherwise be paid for!

Preferably an adult who is less dismissing, then reprimanding, downright aggressive and even cursing “the biggest muggles I ever laid eyes on”, even though they are Harry’s muggles. And if Harry should feel less than thankful for his uncle’s brave-stubborn attempts to prevent Harry from entering an “abnormal” world where his parents were killed by a “worse than worse” and assumedly immortal species, but the fate sits on a baby’s shoulders, is it not Harry’s right to retaliate? Harry’s right to forgive? After Hagrid’s great entry, Harry’s muggles are sufficiently traumatised to disown him from the mankind shall he ever return. Tonight.

More so, the term “muggle” – “Don’t know how muggles manage without magic”- should not feel an insult, unless it is to be insulting that Harry was left to be raised by muggles. Then, of course, Harry would know all about Hogwarts. Of its “Greatest Headmaster Ever” - an Albus Dumbledore.

“You would think that if my person was registered for Hogwarts since infancy.

If the magical world requests my person, it would do its best to keep me throughout the years, teach me the old ways, so as not to mutually suffer my ignorance of having never even heard about Hogwarts. Dumbledore wrote them a letter, as if we have not seen how well it works!

Though it surprises me, he found the time to write them a letter the Great Man, the lone pillar the entire Ministry of Magic rests upon, less they mess more things up than usual! At least he is trustworthy to keep my vault key untouched, and entirely Good too.” Harry snorts.

Every action has a consequence and the ones Harry detects so far seem less favourable. Worse is the number of open threads – “Your wand is a brother to His”, glaring at Harry in their unknown quality, not predictable. Not safe.

The letter is awfully short, what are the required nine books but a drop in the ocean. He needs information. Too many questions, but answers are never the same. He looks at the stunned blond boy – one has to talk, that the other listens. He asks – “What do you know about last war?”

Then he repeats his question, because – “Under the assumption I am Harry Potter, what do you know about the Last War?”

***

It is the man that introduces himself as a Lucius Malfoy, the blond boy’s father that writes Harry the list. Harry gives it along with the note of Hogwarts supplies to the clerk at the “Flourish and Blotts”, and if he hides an unknown amount of reading material into his extension-charmed bag, it is not for Hagrid to see. The Key Keeper is nice to him, genuinely so - ”You look just like your father, but with your mother’s eyes, and such the good people them been.”, but even a temporary abandonment can force a child to think for itself, and once there – No Way Back.

At Dursleys’, and shrunk trunk in a new pocket – ten years worth of money be put to a good use. No pet, as Harry is not yet to bear responsibility for another being. An owl oscillating towards Harry’s window, and if Mr. Malfoy knows how to earn Harry’s trust, he as promised, has sent books from all and any side of the enmity not-quite-ended.

It is the least that Harry can do, to understand what “Light” did his parents fight for, and what “Dark” have they stood against, and where in all this mess does it actually leave him, a Harry Potter?          


	3. Choice

Not a Nobody.

Aunt Petunia’s “wizarding prototype” is not exactly flattering, when she relates of the pride the Evans grandparents held for the other daughter.

Magic is an ability to swish a wand and conjure a glass of water, where you otherwise would be seeking a well.

Magic is about feelings, the way things most mundane can appear special to an observer’s eyes.

The love Dursleys conjure for each other. Uncle Vernon’s passion to make drills. The absurdity that has a down-to-earth Uncle Vernon marry a woman with a neck as long as a swan’s. The way everyone pretends that any chair with Harry in it, is an empty chair... This too is magic.

According to Mr. Malfoy’s sources, the most potent magic depends on both the feelings and intent. On one’s will to subdue, to torture and eradicate.

The Dursleys annihilate Harry’s existence insofar as they will him to disappear, as they pretend that Harry not exists. A delusion to not withstand an examination by senses, be it of them five or six.

The other magic, if anything it grants Harry the power to manifest his desires in a more profound, touchable way. With an ease to create a world, “normal” humans only achieve in groups sufficiently large, given the assumption of resources and time and endeavour.        

Thou, privileged beings! The tool this magic is, to raise the single individuals other the heads of many. Power to change what is real, like only the cheaters can.

But Dursleys are a respectable family. With a dignity of the handicapped, they attempt a bourgeois revolution, and shrink against the height of a Napoleon.

Harry has to be a Napoleon, because it is more than a simple “wizard” and an equivalent to a “Boy-Who-Lived”, a person who stood above the impossible.

Then, he befriends Russia.

***

To remove Dudley’s pigtail is the first step and a day’s study. Add a week to placate his struggling relatives, devoid of an ounce of trust. 

If Harry knows to control magic, he can protect his subjects against magic, he proves. Uncle Vernon buys Harry a train-ticket to the King’s Cross Station and Aunt Petunia makes Harry a box of her best sandwiches. Dudley insists that they celebrate Harry’s birthday and they go to Zoo.

To domesticate snakes you learn how to speak the snake-language. Harry speaks to the snakes and the snakes speak back.

Because Harry’s hand of peace is of an unprecedented value. For the first time during his stay at the Privet Drive Number Four, Harry is valued.

Just as the Boy-Who-Lived is.

***

“The Boy-Who-Lived”, Harry decides, is not an imitation of a James Potter, his father. He ought to be a Head Boy and a Quidditch Captain and his marks to be really good too, and he still cannot shed this well-used skin, Harry inherits.

The flaw within a Ron Weasley’s thought is a lack of imagination. What hope he has to stand against his predecessor’s achievements if he willingly places himself within the limits of their achievements – instead of forging his own path. To become all this that a James Potter was not, yet at the same time not to become a Not-James-Potter.

Harry’s third way begins in a train compartment. Next to him a red-headed boy laments of his place in life, because he wants to be different, yet knows not how.

In Harry’s hand there is a thick book he re-invites the parts of to his memory. And it is when the bushy-haired girl sees the book, that she ceases to rant and exclaims eagerly – “Is this… It certainly is. It is “Hogwarts. A History””!

And in the sudden epiphany other a new-found connection the girl sees Harry as if for the first time and extends her hand –

“Hermione Granger, pleased to meet you”.

Harry introduces himself and everyone gasps, because underneath a fringe and his shoulder-length hair, Harry is a celebrity.

“I read all about you!” Hermione begins,

“So did I”, Harry winks back. “I do however prefer “Hogwarts. A History”, as it covers a wider range of the subjects”.

Harry favours to be Hermione’s hero for something he is consciously responsible for – no matter how less impressive it might seem to know the contents to a book instead of vanquishing Dark Lords more powerful than any.  More so -

“It gives you a feeling, you know, about the Houses and which one has the people like you”.

A House full of Harry Potters, Ha, what an Imagery!

Then the girl thinks herself a Chosen One, and happily chirps – “I have been asking around, and Gryffindor sounds by far the best. I hear Dumbledore himself was in it…”

“But you see, the last time I checked, you were a Hermione”.

Harry is getting quite proficient to quiet the girl. She sat on the bench opposite of him and focused her lively eyes on Harry waiting for an explanation.

“Hogwarts. A History”, Harry said. “I read it. You read it. Ron…” a look at the other boy’s vivid physiognomy and Harry speaks – “Ron has not even heard the name before”.

Hermione’s shocked gasp.

“What is the person you would think, that has no appreciation of the book, I wonder…”

And Harry’s dramatic pause.

“Gryffindors are brave. What is there brave about reading books, one would think? Fighting a grown troll, why such is the true courage. But reading a book? Not even worth for a dare…”

Ron’s exuberant smile.

“Hufflepuffs are patient and loyal. If motioned by a figure of respected authority, if an entire house has the brilliant idea to acquaint themselves with “Hogwarts. A History”, what a Hufflepuff speaks against it?

Knowledge in turn is everything to a Ravenclaw. Of course a Ravenclaw has to read this book, any book in fact, because what is more precious than to learn?”

Hermione nods vigorously, but Harry adds -

“For a Slytherin “Hogwarts. A History” is a means to an end. As long as he expects the reading experience to be beneficial to whatever personal ambition he follows, he reads this book. Any book.”      

Because knowledge is power.

“So tell me Hermione, since you can’t be a Gryffindor, why have you read “Hogwarts. A History”?

Because someone told you so, and you could not refuse? Out of a pure, unquestionable interest? Or is it out of an expectation it helps you to better adjust in a world you now own?”

***

And the hat screamed “SLYTHERIN”.


	4. Socialising

Monday night, half the contents from a Draco Malfoy’s trunk compartment lived in exile in the lands of one Harry Potter.

Tuesday, a Hermione Granger cornered a Harry Potter during their combined Charms class, tugged nervously at the soft ribbon of deep blue to tame her unruly hair and wondered “Why?”

“I already told you” insisted Harry and took the seat next to her. She invited him to all the study groups for advanced preparations her housemates have. He said, he needs to analyse his weaknesses first, said maybe.

Wednesday, and the shock of meeting a Harry Potter is only outweighed by his choice of clothes.

Thursday, that Harry concludes there are lessons that are a waste of time, and then there are Messieurs Binns and Quirrel.

On Friday, Potions, initial session with Gryffindors and a vicinity of a Weasley, Ron –

“Blimey! How can you be in Slytherin? You are, you ARE….!”

“The Boy-Who-Lived, I presume?”

Sometimes Harry just liked to talk. The power to talk, and others listen. Malfoy is addicted to it, as is Hermione - to the sound of the own voice. Harry talks –

“Looking back at the night that I vanquished the Dark Lord, why would it happen?

A theory is I am such a Beacon of Light that approaching me with his inherent evilness, it was as if Voldemort faced antimatter and everything explodes. Pufff!”

Ron shows a high susceptibility to a well-placed onomatopoeia, feels convinced. Harry less so –

“It could also be quite the opposite. That myself even at an age of one was simply the Greater Evil, and the Dark Lord discovered his master.

Otherwise, it would be naught of my doing at all. My parents rather used whatever means to ensure my protection, whereas my baby self lived through a blank page of food, sleep, entertainment, as children supposedly do. Then, I choose Slytherin.

What theory, pray tell, seems like a Lesser Evil?”

“Eh…” elucidated Ron Weasley.

 Aunt Petunia always said not to ask questions. Harry does not ask for answers beyond a first vulnerability. It is time to tie up, before time forces their conversation to a premature end.

“I like books”, Harry provides. Ron agrees, because Harry read “Hogwarts. A History”.

“My ambition is to have all the books in the entire world only for my pleasure. Then, I sit in my dark-dark castle and cackle evilly and be called a Book Lord. And that is why I am in Slytherin”.

Harry narrows his eyes in a passable imitation of a weapon of destruction and pursues –

“Are you a threat to my future book collection?

As long as you are not a threat to my magnificent book collection, I have not the need to be your enemy. Therefore would you partake in the not-your-enemy to have been invited for tea by a Hogwarts Keeper of Keys and Grounds named Hagrid?”

***

“A letter from the Oaf? What is in for you there?” a Malfoy heir shakes in distaste.

“Damage control”, shrugs the neighbour next seat.

***

Harry waits that there is nothing between him and Professor Snape before approaching his Head of the House, a man sharp and moody. In the meaning of always bad mood.

He speaks the following way in the direct reference to the events that transpired –

“I appreciate the trust you have shown me by using me an example of a pupil well-prepared, however pray tell me if you intend to continue doing so. I don’t yet know the textbook by heart. I was lucky to have taken an interest in the same few points you have asked me about. If I am to expect to be called upon regularly, I shall make it my priority to exhaustively study the textbook as well as any other recommended supplementary materials, Sir. “

A sleep potion so strong it imitates death. A help against most every poison. And of poisons a queen. The act of fall, of salvation, or simply an act?

They look in each other’s eye because Harry wishes for no enemies. Whilst Professor Snape cannot be an enemy, has not to be a friend, them are wide - waters of neutrality.

“Your hair…” notes the Professor.

“My aunt failed to cut it short, I opted to try the opposite”. 

“Your eyes…” breaths the man, but catches himself, moves on –

“Two weeks to study “One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi”, then I quiz you upon it. Shall you pass, I may supervise you on brewing an eyesight correcting potion.”

“Would be a honour, Sir”.

Drop curtain.

***

The Key Keeper lived on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, and served a good tea to the hard cakes.

“Harry” he frowns. “There's not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin. You-Know-Who was one.”

„That is terrible“, Harry assents.

“Terrible!” Hagrid implies.

“So thought I. That is why, time for a Change!”

A lion in the snake’s den, he is?

Relaxing in the cosy hut. As Ron occupied Hagrid occupied Ron with all matters Dragons, Harry sipped an Earl Grey, leafed a newspaper and wake-dreamed a memory of the deepest joy from being back home.


	5. First Love

There is not an owl for Harry to flood the vast emptiness of the Great Hall, zealously drop a note of reverence and a box of desire. Draco eagerly tears into artworks of flour and chocolate, courtesy of one Narcissa, his mother. Not a single delicacy at Hogwarts stands but a chance against, he says.

It is a common misconception that the Slytherin drive for self-preservation makes him a self-seeking, uncaring person. In fact, Slytherins keep loyal to themselves and the selected few to have gained their regard. A loyalty that is in the direct proportion to regard, resulting feelings of trust and affection given once and forever.

Where Lucius tries to woo Harry, it is Draco that holds his father’s loyalty. Albeit Harry never receives a letter, Draco is able to shrug it off, that his big, lovely packages are in fact not that impressively sized at all.

***

In theory, Harry learnt about a variety of muggle sports. As he never had anyone to try these out with, so to speak, Harry is less acquainted with the endorphin rush physical endeavour initiates.

Of the wizarding sports there are few, as wizards feel above the menial labour, in robes their bodies hide.

Harry has no appreciation for team activities, as he knows not to rely on anyone but himself.

Duels seem the rosy alternative. Taken in account the extraordinary qualities of their Defence against the Dark Arts instructor, Quidditch is all the talk.

Quidditch!

In Quidditch, Harry allows, a Seeker has not to be involved with his teammates, hardly with his counterpart. Ends the game and receives the points, a ridiculous amount of.

If Quidditch is the wizarding way to fight, Seekers resemble two opposing Lords, all the other players are infantry. Little bugs slaughtering each other, hardly of consequence, all for show. 

Unless the fate wills and Isildur cuts the ring from a Sauron’s hand, it is the Lords, that decide the battle over the heads of the armies.

When Luthien dances in front of Melkor.

When Bombs fall upon Hiroshima.

Harry could live with a Seeker’s part, maybe.

And going against fate, Harry asks Draco to give him the Remembrall. Keeps silent of what he has, and has not. 

He gifts Neville a diary of dark leather to keep his thoughts organised. To know things that have been. Things that are. Maybe the things that yet come to be.

To stay with both feet on firm ground.

***

When he plays chess with Ron, sits with Hermione in Charms and History, hears Draco in the Common Room, and is Neville’s Potions partner… Then, the moody Professor Snape, because I hate you and love you so, cannot help but feel gratitude that lasts well into the adjacent brewing session. Of Harry’s eyes and Severus’s whims, and costly ingredients not to be wasted, and Severus teaches.

The less people were opposed to him, the less they oppose him. The least a Boy-Who-Lived gets is the benefit of the doubt.

The most he desires is solitude.

***

Whereas Harry feels safe in a library, it is a long-suppressed longing to have his own books.    

He not-stole a book once.

It had not many pictures, nor a nice cover and a decidedly complicated language. It was in several exemplars, for unexpectedly in demand. It never stayed longer than for a few days and vanished for months. It was an exceptionally thick book and in his initial naivety, Harry began a read he could not end. It was thrilling. He was devastated.

It was as if waiting for an eternity to read the next chapter.

He thought, it might be his favourite book. He dreamt up various lines of events, each time with a different outcome. Wars were won and lost, and deemed altogether unnecessary. It was no earlier that the Dark Lord eloped to another world, came to the Privet Drive Number Four in search of a heartfelt conversation over a cup of tea. That Aunt Petunia rode a black horse and Dudley sold butterbur, that the book returned.

That night – December, dark, very cold, Harry hid the book in the far back of the adult section behind volumes on history of philosophy, and comparably hot issues the nights that followed.

The days though, Harry perused a series of exceptionally heavy-because-huge encyclopaedias to obscure an observer’s chance at finding the book, Harry reads. Harry sits exactly across the Fantasy section, watches visitors trace the book spines, for help call. Librarians discuss the lost book, that is supposed to be, never is. Why is the book lost? Was book stolen?

Harry risks by sitting exactly across the place it belongs to. It feels right in Harry’s wan hands. He rather be spotted but see, than hide and fear the Unknown.

They give up on the book, when Harry returns it.

***

True to his word, Mr. Malfoy gifts Harry books.    

Lost for popular propaganda, Harry is willing to try objectivity, but Mr. Malfoy firmly believes in the supremacy of his own side. If Harry is to benefit the Dark, the boy must be of a sufficient intelligence to see through the Light’s lies, and the senselessness of neutrality, Mr. Malfoy trusts.

Whereas Harry owned all the books in the library, but never a book, he eagerly unwraps dark green paper. It is after class and Halloween, an hour until Dinner, and this one thin, handwritten, “Essays”, can be done with.

He misses food and general commotion a troll caused. He never leaves his dorm room, the cushions and canopy. Because of a book, that is charmed to seem less but be more. Pages, those appear endless. He wishes them endless. He loves.

***

“Mr. P-P-Potter…”       

Buzzing in the periphery, incessant. Harry looks up from his book behind the book and bites a disgruntled “What?”

Then, he concedes that they are short of a class, but one too many - the teacher and him, to resume. Harry intends to vacate his seat, packs his bag, but it is Professor Quirrell himself, that remarks –

“Perusing the Ministry prohibited literature, how comes, Potter?”

Harry glares, because - “Fools, all of them”, strokes book spine, but Professor reaches his hand out, voice rough, clean –

“How would you come upon this… limited edition?”, voice enquires.

Stretches hand out to touch…

Harry bolts back, book against chest, holding tight, hopelessly. Thin book charmed to go on for forever, “Essays”, classy cursive. Words like thunderbolts, ember, frost. Laughing, dead earnest. Mine. Mine.

“Must go” he cries, stays no more.

Harry avoids thinking of Dumbledore’s parcel, as one trades discovery for discovery, weakness for weakness. Wading the dangerous waters, the Boy-Who-Lived covets a dark mystery. Professor Quirrell is more than he seems.


	6. Mirrors

Information exchange as a part to a social relationship can be occasionally aimed at in fact exchanging information; more often than not, the speaker seeks confirmation as to one’s own opinion, world view, self-worth.

It is therefore the virtues of proper listening – you grunt, nod, paraphrase, ask easy questions, nod, smile, get eyes contact…

“So you think Chudley Cannons are to win this year’s Quidditch Cup.”

That make even a person, who obviously has neither the knowledge nor an opinion on the subject in question favourable still to a devoted expert, who dares to contradict.

“And that is why Slytherin is going to annihilate Gryffindor’s team, like it did the last year and the year before too…?”

Certainly, a listener knowledgeable in the subject and of the same opinion is a preferable one, but Harry is a celebrity for vanquishing Dark Lords, which makes him automatically an expert on everything else too.

“Don’t know how Harry can stand your stupid face!”

In the end, even if Harry appreciates the whole game ear-plugged, nose in the book, he still gains points by inviting two ardent Quidditch lovers, a Draco Malfoy and a Ron Weasley to share space, thus spend all the time hating each other instead of trying to make Harry watch.

In the case of a benevolent listener, silence is always gold, and no answer – the preferentially expected answer.  Divide and conquer.

Muggle psychologists is a profession initially paid for listening to the client, eventually – for making the client listen to oneself.

***

Harry needs to talk about the book, to listen, to share. He inquired about it of Lucius Malfoy, yet not to receive an answer. He wants more information, an expert. As the stadium growls in cheers and despair, as Terence Higgs of Slytherin reaches for the Golden Snitch, Harry’s eyes meet those of Professor Quirrell sitting opposite. Not one to tremble from fear, Harry faces the Unknown.

“Excuse me, Professor! Regarding the last Defence against the Dark Arts assignment…”

They take the stray route home.

***

The book is not a book. Thin, but charmed to go on for forever, it contains several texts by the same artful hand, dated from the nineteen-forties on.

The first five of them Harry calls “essays”, try-outs, as they are short and to the point, each as if done on a single weekend, on few days in a row, expressing a sudden insight, as if a diary entry.

Playful, charming, decadent, always questioning, fooling the dedicated reader into seeing an opinion only to have it deconstructed very next line. Again and anew, and once there is a conclusion, how can it be trusted in the light of the previous experience? What is there left, but the writer’s half-smile? What is a solution, but fictitious?

The words that are exchangeable, as are themes. Woven together by the One’s personality, omnipresent, alluring. Never as distant as a good novelist, nor as overbearing as the guidebook, that assumes to know you, truly you, because you are a case like many. For the one behind these essays has no interest in you. He, focused on himself, as if the world is but reflection of his eyes, a dream and him the dreamer, and Harry feels as if reading a diary.

Harry reads, and it is intense an experience, where the writer pushes himself into his words, flirts with ideas, but reaches a heart. Harry laughs, and blushes mad daze, and how to continue, yet worse to abstain... Addictive, this first love.

During a Quidditch play, he finishes the sixth text.

The sixth is different still.

***

They walk, and Harry insists, that Harry listens. To Harry’s bravery and Professor’s discernment they abandon pretence, and Professor talks, and Harry listens, -

““The Death of Merlin”?

A daring peace of youthful arrogance and Know-It-All. The boy behind it… Yes, a feeble example of the male species, as you assumed. The newest Messiah, he wished to illume venerable society with a word of wisdom. He published a book. Admittedly, the book was all the talk for a week or two.

Certainly, the Ministry considered to have him found and persecuted. He must have honestly thanked that inborn sense of self-preservation of his to employ a pseudonym, vanish all traces. Not able to decide, if he wants to speak or keep silent, he whispers.

Not found within a week or two, they granted him a madman’s freedom, for only fools follow a reputed fool. He - a fool.

He never published another book. He continued writing. He gifted a copy of his “Essays” to a selected few. I believe there might be but seven exemplars in existence. I have known him once.

But he, yes he, no longer the boy, he once was”.  

***

It was a book on Dark Magic, the theory of Dark Magic, glorifying Dark Magic, at the time that Gellert Grindelwald subdues Europe.     

“But what about Dark Families for of them are many? Should not they support their writer’s cause?”

“Whom? A presumptuous, nameless brat, thinking he can disregard lore and tradition? That he can teach the Houses Most Ancient and Noble?”

Professor laughs, because somewhen the effect of “Who?” prevails over the meaning of “What?”

***

Wrong, wrong, wrong, feels Harry. To condemn a book by the identity of its writer. As if someone stated an opinion, but to the general audience it merely matters, how this person is not entitled to have that opinion, instead of trying the validity of the opinion itself.

The opinion itself, the mere fact it exists, should not suffice to sway the listener, unless it is true.

Unless the reader is of the easily influenced, mindless soul that believes whatever flushed down his throat. In such a case, however, the danger is not a book, but its reader. Not the book, but the non-thinking, easily manipulated reader is the danger to society.

“Danger?”, Professor curls an eyebrow.

 “There are too few of the wizarding kind, as not to strive that every single one is to become an enlightened individual”, Harry knows. Harry agrees, that perchance – “The structure of Light, the passion of the Dark may co-exist in Greatness”.

 Do not burn books, burn minds.

“You would be the first…” shrugs the Defence Professor, half-smiles, leaves. They are drops to an empty glass, what Professor disclosed about his one time acquaintance, but Harry takes every way to make glass full.

***

“Harry, my Boy”, the Headmaster winks from where the path abandons the Great Lake and returns to Hogwarts. Harry runs as not to have the old man wait, clutching his bag as not to lose it to November winds.

It is the first time they speak, face to face, and Dumbledore voices great hopes, “that you will follow your father’s footsteps and win Gryffindor the Quidditch Cup. They are obviously naught now”.       

Harry hides in black curls of November hair, I am not with you, I am not against you.

“The book, you so fervently read this day, - fancy to recommend?”, a twinkle in Headmaster’s eyes. A laugh on Harry’s lips -

“A book about Love”, amongst other things, thinks Harry. Thankfully it was _his_ book, where if necessitated, you can quote all and its opposite too.

The old man stretches his November hand.   It swirls for a moment a faded yellow, stills decided –

“My Boy, the truth, it is a beautiful and terrible thing. The night that Voldemort came after you, that a killing curse rebounded from you, it was your mother’s love to save you.

Know, that your mother died to save you, and the love as powerful as your mother’s, it left you with a mark, an invisible protection against the soul full of hatred, greed and ambition, as Voldemort’s soul is.

If there is one thing, my Boy, that Voldemort cannot understand, it is Love. His only demise is Love, for no mightier there is a power…

Believe me, Boy”

“I know”, whispers Harry, “I know”.

***

_“As I have traced the presence of the greatest yet known wizard, from his birth out of an epiphany of Darkness, conjured to form in a Pristine maiden’s womb... As I have shown how the child without a father was guided by the sublime Salazar Slytherin to free himself from his muggle mother’s sermons – to pray the freakishness out of the boy! By shedding his childhood skin, he embraced his inheritance, becoming the man we all know. Merlin! Merlin! Merlin the Seer, the Maker, the Shape-Shifter, the Dark. What is it, which overcame Merlin? What banished the Most Exceptional from the plane of existence? Vanquished the Most Powerful? What is the Power?  What is the Death of Merlin, but the Final Sacrifice? As he sacrificed himself to himself, as he willingly faced Death for he known Love!_

_Love, a common misconception about Dark Magic, that it is not fuelled by Love. But it is!_

_They fear love, they fear desire, they fear rage, the strongest of feelings they fear, just as they fear anything they are too weak to control! As they fear Darkness._

_Love is the most ruthless, all-consuming, violent emotion, like a thunderous sea, the chaos’ primeval waters. It is dark of its nature and origin. It can be robbed of its power, embellished to a classical ideal of virtuous love. Hearken! They strip love of its nature!_

_With its force of desire, of longing, of possessiveness and protectiveness, of hatred, of sex, Love escalates in a Dark Ritual._

_Indulge in the raw emotions, instead of caging Love into a corset of what is good and proper. Don’t disregard love!_

_As Merlin loves Morgan, the Lake’s fair Lady, as he accepts her his pupil, teaches her his artfulness and beyond, he sees the Danger. He has little Hope, that the time together spent, makes her to return his affections. In love he hopelessly is, in desire to join what is the primordial. And he willingly steps to be sacrificed in his last Great Moment of Magic, as she asks, as he hides the Island of Avalon forever from a world no longer worthy. From Muggles and Wizards alike, that no longer sense._

_By his eternal Self-Sacrifice out of Love, Merlin protects his Love and home to his Love with the powers unfathomable. For it is in his Death, that Merlin births one last abode to Magic itself, as it faces Death in this world war-ridden”._

***

Ever since Halloween, that Professor Snape favours one leg over the other, he gives Harry a pass to the Restricted Section of the school library, and has Harry search for himself for the potions recipes soon due. Lost in-between is a thin book, an essay outside of “Essays”, and Harry rereads the last lines, from 1943, “The Death of Merlin out of the Meaning of Love” by a Thomas Myrddin.

He spends a lot of time finding it, this forgotten book, and before he closes it, looses back to the shelf, he lingers a time. There is desire, and Harry succumbs to desire to touch one last name on this piece of parchment, where the previous, short-term owners noted. It is an entry from the nineteen-seventies.

It was Lily Evans.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank You, Everyone, honestly thank you for comments, subscriptions and kudos! It helps, definitely. 
> 
> This is the first chapter of supposedly three to work with "DoM", the first book of interest in the collection of books, the Book basically is. To be exact the Book is based on the Complete Works of a RL writer I love, adapted to suit both the world of "Harry Potter" and its in-world author. I wonder if anyone can guess the original writer's name? 
> 
> Personally I think it is an easy riddle to solve, but then again I am reading through his works right now in order to figure out the chapters, therefore I am biased. The necessity to read first, is one of the reasons for delayed updates. Then it is December, and cold, and I get this cold. Then, there might be life. (Of this I am not yet sure). 
> 
> Anyway, I hope this scarcely edited chapter is to your liking, and if there are any questions, please - Ask!


	7. Knowledge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since it was brought to my attention, that my "time passing" may be somewhat difficult to follow, I want to warn that the seventh chapter consists of two intermingling plot lines. So whenever there is a switch in characters, setting and topics, the other plot line continues. A simple "***", however, not always equals a scene break/scene change. It may also be a short break/pause within a scene (...)

“All Magic is Ritual Magic”.

 He calls himself Thomas Myrddin. Fifty years ago, he was of a sufficient youth to be now referred a “boy” by the not quite middle aged Professor Quirrell. He assumedly left hundreds over hundreds of pages of thought and his thoughts only, but “Death of Merlin” was his first and, owing to the less favourable circumstances, his only work wrote with intention of publication.  There is a well-forgotten exemplar in the Hogwarts Library.

As he wished to make his beliefs known, he wrote a book that was longer, more straightforward and more structured in its content, but vaguer a mirror.

“All Magic is Ritual Magic. It has to be, as something cannot be conjured from nothing”.

True to its title, the book covers the life of a wizard named Merlin with swift detail, fuelled by the fact there is indeed little to nothing known about Merlin. To thicken a biography, the popular art is through addition of general historical knowledge, topographical information and a specious guess.  “Death of Merlin” is not a biography.

It is a work about the nature of Magic, or rather that magic is Nature. That magic is inherent to Nature. That Merlin was the last living bloke to realise it, is circumstantial. It fades in the face of the Greatest Wizard of Our Times, a madman’s counterpart born centuries late, who rediscovers. Who calls himself “Merlin’s Twin”, as such is a “Thomas Myrddin” etymologically.

Harry sits at a desk of dark wood and on cushioned chair. Feather in hand, Harry surceases midair, because if he wants to summarise the book, he ought to dig deeper still.

“All Magic is Nature Magic. Natural is whatever exists.”

Likewise for Descartes “I think, therefore I am” the mere process of self-awareness is sufficient for an existence, and not the availability of any one specific or common or exceptional thought. “I believe there is a God” is an equally valid statement, as “I wonder, if cat whiskers are longer than of a dog.”

Whatever is, is a part of nature. Magic is.

According to T.M., magic is a specific part of the nature. T.M. cites the ancient myth of how the Earth itself was shaped out of a primordial ocean. This ocean, wherein Earth floats, he identifies as Magic.   

Harry thinks about the Earth’s magnetic field, invisible and untouchable, yet the muggle scientists believe, it protects our planet from the solar wind radiation, and in turn makes air breathable.

The magical field surrounding Earth, however, is watery. Given the energy, it grows a solid ice of a magically conjured toad, of a well-aimed floating charm. Spent, it evaporates like a last hour’s transfiguration. Magic is therefore a creative, a moving entity. To use another muggle science concept, Magic is the potential energy to the manifest Nature’s kinetic energy, to the energy that manifests itself.

In turn, we have Magic as the true form to Nature, whereas Nature acts as an appearance to Magic.  

“Nature is Magic. All that exists is Magic. Is Magic the only thing that exists?”   

***

“Why, Weasley, the abhorrent way you wolf down Hogwarts food… Is it because Mommy and Daddy have not got any money, or merely no money to feed their least able son?”

Not bothering to swallow, Ron retorted with indignation – “At least, Malfoy, I don’t run to Mommy and Daddy to take care of me like every single second”.

“I'd take you on anytime on my own,” indicated Draco. “Tonight, if you want. Wizard's duel. Wands only—no contact. What's the matter? Never heard of a wizard's duel before, I suppose?”

“Of course I have, “exclaimed Ron, “Harry will be my second”.

“Certainly not, Weasley. Potter is far better suited to stand at mine”, vetoed Draco.

“So,” summarised Harry -“When was it again, that I am to shoot myself?”

***

Ron and Draco. Draco and Ron. Draco is everything what Ron wants to be. Ron is everything that Draco fears to become. Twins separated at birth, the Prince and the Pauper. Only one vastly privileged – money, influence, heir. Both seek solace in ideological concepts, in glorified battles of Dark and Light to re-enact with insults and beginner magic.

“Ron, what does it take for you to admit of valuing Draco’s fashion sense and manners and how he manages to be a prominent figure in his House?

Draco, do not you betimes envy Ron’s aptitude not to care? Is not it worth admiration, how Ron is still able to walk as if he owns the place?” 

Does not Ron wish to have, what Draco owns? Would not it be relieving to Draco, the awareness that should his family chose wrongly in the upcoming war, should it suffer, that he, Draco, can still be his own person, when his possessions are naught? 

“Never” assent both boys.

“But is this “never” something you believe, or something you know?”

***

Whereas the magnet field spans all of Earth, only certain animals able of “magnetoception” can naturally use its power to navigate during migration. Whilst all beings are conjured from Magic, the so-called magical creatures additionally possess a reservoir of raw magical energy – of forming power.

T.M. insists that the first humans to discover their magic perused its transforming power by establishing the Magical Ritual.

A wizard offered a sacrifice to Magic, and by dint of the rites and incantations he asked Magic to evoke an entity that is different in its shape, but of an equal energy value as the sacrificed.

Such an interaction with Magic got as popular and widely known, that even muggle villages with no wizarding inhabitant to act the messenger of people needs, tried to emulate the Ritual with a variety of outcomes. Indeed, the mage uses his inherent power to return what there is of the sacrifice – its beauty, health, sanity, its soul, body and life force to its magical origins. When he burns the sacrifice, he dissolves it and frees its energy, so it can be re-used. Muggles, in turn, gain only whatever raw magical energy the sacrifice originally has. In the same line as muggles can use previously enchanted artefacts, they ought to sacrifice a magical creature to succeed.

Next to the daily occasion Light Ritual of trading appearances, T.M. declares a second kind of Magical Ritual to be invented, the Dark Ritual, from Old Speech “derkaz” – to hide, to conceal.

The Hidden Way.

***

“There is a fine line between belief and knowledge”, Harry argues, even though it should be a wall, abysmally thick.

“What you believe is how the things appear. What you know, is how the things are.

Is it that you only believe yourself complete opposites of each other, or do you really are?”

And facing the two of them, – “How do we determine that your mutual hatred is of an actual consistence, and not mere opinions and prejudices?”

Somewhere during the talk, the three of them moved from Great Hall to an empty alcove nearby. Draco was not tripping over a random lance, Ron held his nose low and eyes lower. Hermione has not happily joined with Neville and suggested they make a list of any features the two share and share not...  

“Purebloods” prompted Longbottom.

“Filthy Blood Traitor” raised voice Malfoy.

“Death Eater Scum” countered Weasley.

“Fluent at name-calling” suggested Potter. Potter sighed. Potter decided to take theory to a neutral, flourishing ground.

“So, what do you imagine is,” Potter said, “which makes touring the Third Floor Corridor a “painful death” experience?”      

***

“To perform Magic two Rituals were developed, the Light and the Dark one. Whereas a Light adept works with temperance, it is “Darkness” alone, which surpasses the laws of energy conservation“. 

Twists them by the wizard’s will.

T.M. suggests another forage into mythology, this time asking if some of the acts accomplished, like splitting a sea in half, as throwing thunderbolts from heaven and causing the sea rage… are more than a wishful thinking of humans involved.

He implies that with the aid of meditation and sacrifice, a wizard can channel his own being to access the magical plane itself, to connect with it and to use it as a virtually unlimited supply of raw magical energy to fuel one’s schemes.

He believes that most of what is deemed the impossible is merely the improbable, because hardly a wizard has the power of mind to work the power of nature. If a weak person attempts the Dark Ritual, they shall find themselves lost within the primeval waters, might dissolve completely, that is die. Might permanently sputter gibberish, or maybe for a day or two, as if strongly inebriated. The Oracles of Old would be the most lucid ones from the failing – not yet capable of magic manipulation, they at least retain enough sense of themselves to grasp at the nearby swirls just emerging to existence. A random, shaky, quite pathetic attempt to read future. 

T.M. knows, that only a few of the alleged Gods of Old ever rose above the limits of ordinary. As long as there exists a simpler explanation, there is no need to assume the mastery of Dark Ritual. Ruthlessly, T.M. keeps his lists short. And for the last name listed? Why, it is Merlin.

***

Ever the brave Gryffindor, Ron is the first to attempt an answer. “A huge beast”, Ron said, “like a g-g-giant s-spider”, Ron trembled visibly. Taken by his idea, he painted with brash words – “A nest! An Acromantula nest! That is what they keep in the Third Floor Corridor!”

Ron belonged to the kind of young men that seeing an Arachnid swiftly the room flee. Shrieking, they indicate then to the valiant wife to fetch her most despiteous a slipper.

Nevertheless, popular fears of snakes and spiders are thought to go back to the prehistoric times as giant insects and reptiles plagued the precursors of human race. From evolutional standpoint a Ron theorising an Acromantula to live in Hogwarts is about as plausible as a Basilisk. But then, you have Slytherin.

“It could be a plant,” wonders Harry. “Muggle adventure books tend to picture Venus Flytraps, which normally prey on tiny insects and spiders, but enlarged, could well swallow a human.

Worse, the plant emits a delicious, sweet scent, compelling its poor, enamoured victim to willingly reach out for the cavern of wonders, to be alive eaten...”

 “Honestly,” interjects Hermione. “You two seem to have forgotten, what we are – Wizards! In our wands, we have the power to subdue dangerous creatures. No, this trap must target our ability to perform magic itself. It could be a room warded so heavily, that once in, you can’t go out, and die painfully of thirst and starvation”.

Hermione always feared to fail the next charm they learnt, or not to perform it quickly enough to impress Professor. Not knowing a required spell was worse still.

“A potion”, stammered Neville. “You might need to perfectly brew a potion in order to leave the room, I mean…”

Despite being shielded by Harry in their joint Snape hours. Even though Neville’s particular talent for Herbology carried on to the precisely prepared potions ingredients, which Harry carefully stirred to completion. For all, Neville turns a leaf by a mere thought of anything Severus Snape related, and in turn… Potions.

“That’s stupid”, for once shows insight Gregory Goyle, having re-assumed the task of flanking a Draco Malfoy along with his friend Vincent Grabbe. “Someone busts the trap, it alerts Headmaster. Won’t leave anyone trapped for long. Must be swift death”.

“It’s a battlefield”, continues Vincent. “The enemies come, you smash. Get back together. You smash, they keep coming. They come. You smash. You can’t no more.”

Grabbe and Goyle, big, heavy, muscled. A build compensating the lack of intelligence, of magical prowess. As novels have, any enchanted enemy has a weakness, a switch to push. Grabbe and Goyle won’t find the switch. Stuck to the blind violence, they die.

“What do you think, Draco? Any ideas?” There is a lovely collection. Surely, they can add another –

“It’s a troll”, Draco shrugs.

“A troll?” laughs Ron, because two and half months into the school year, any wizard can vanquish some dumb troll.

“Of course”, argues Draco, - “Remember Halloween? There is no way some dumb troll can enter the school, unless it is already there. They keep it in the Third Floor Corridor and doing quite the lousy job of it. I am simply waiting till the troll breaks lose, again, mauls some whiny bitch, and Father has Dumbledore suspended for deliberately endangering students, he is actually sworn to protect”.

It takes a Malfoy to see everything an advantage.

***

“Exclusivity of the Dark Ritual, unpredictability of the Light Ritual have led to the development of Light Arts”.

Dark Ritual is immensely powerful, but Magic rarely accepts a Master. Any other attempt is dangerous, as it leads to death, insanity and weakness.

Light Ritual can be powerful, if sufficient the sacrifice. Even a most splendid sacrifice would be wasted, if Magic disagrees. Many words have been said, as to what makes one attempt more successful than an other. Yet in the end, when faced the Nature’s glory, all a wizard can do is hope.

“I know what I cannot know.”

Lost before magnitude of Nature, the human turns his back on Nature, on the Unknown. He centres his efforts upon the human. Restricts himself to only such magic that flows inside of his own magical core. Crafts thousands of spells to make its use sufficient.

Light Arts, as we learn them today, is the simplified Ritual, where the wizard’s own magic and intent are used a sacrifice. It is not powerful, or as powerful as a wizard is before he succumbs to the magical exhaustion. It is overly complicated, as it cannot have power wasted, thus requires tenacious calculations to have every single act of magic performed with the least resistance. There is a spell to turn a plate into bowl and another to turn a bowl into cup, even though the same can be achieved wordlessly and wandlessly too.

In fact, according to T.M., the admirable anthropocentric wizards cheat their way by using wands, that is by permanently adding a proportion of a powerful creature’s magic to their own limited core. They brew potions, which is a Ritual, where the magical flavours of all the ingredients are naturally aligned to reach the desired result.

They invent Dark Arts.

***

“We have one question. And we have six answers” growled Harry, stepping in-between the temperamental children’ wands.

“Not only that, but we have six different answers, which are obviously but opinions influenced by our own, personal fears, or in Draco’s case - hopes, whereas the next best human would see significantly less difficulties solving your task”.

“What do you say?” exclaimed Hermione.

“Know thyself”, smiled Harry, discarding their doubt and their impatience.

“Listen,” he insists, “just like with the hazard in the Third Floor Corridor, Draco and Ron’s insistence that they are nothing alike and hence natural enemies, is only a belief next to many other beliefs. Like Ron believes that Slytherins are despicable evil, but Merlin was a Slytherin and the favourite pupil to Salazar Slytherin himself. More so, there is a theory, that Hogwarts could have never been raised without old Salazar’s participation.

Beliefs are opinions based on the lack of information regarding this exact case, and therefore biased, as brain fills up the gaps with some generalised knowledge, with stereotypes, which might partially apply, or not apply altogether. Just like Draco is a Slytherin, as is Gregory, as is Daphne, as is Merlin, and is Voldemort. Would you believe all these people the same?

But you would!

Unless you know. Knowledge is based upon experimental evidence. Because Ron and Draco ought to spend time together to actually get to know each other. And we have to go and take a look ourselves, if we ever wish to solve the Riddle of the Third Floor Corridor!”

***

Dark, from Old English “deorc”, as in gloomy, sinister, wicked.

Evil.

Still propagating the human supremacy, the Dark Arts are more powerful than the Light Arts are, as they re-expand the scope of sacrifice. Human emotions, as well as blood, flesh and life are utilised to fuel the spells. Unwittingly, Dark Wizards flirt on the boundaries of Old Magic, reinstate its doctrines without an understanding, where the power comes and goes. Somewhen, they step too far and fall to its power. That is where addiction and insanity originates, that is said to circulate through Dark lines.

But the blind denounces the one-eyed, powerless fears the powerful, and morals become his weapon.          

Light Arts become Good Arts, and Dark Arts – the Persecuted.      

Two crippled children to one Light Ritual.

But T.M., yes T.M., he loves Darkness.

***

He calls himself “Merlin’s twin”, and Harry speculates about the extents of such a relation. Is T.M. a half-blood or even half-breed? The child without a father? Was he raised amongst muggles fearful of his heritage, just as Harry himself was?

Has he attended Hogwarts? Was he a Slytherin? A devotee to Salazar’s work?

Has he gone the path beyond any others? Has he seen Magic?

Tamed Magic?

Is he powerful?

And has he known… Has he known…

Love?

***

They creep down the Charms Corridor and stop in front of the locked door. It is early in the afternoon and quarter an hour before the lessons continue. Ron pushes at the door, because he rather knows the face to a painful death, than knows Malfoy.

“Move over”, whispers Hermione, grabs her wand. On their way up, the group decided on the wide range approach – spell the door open, peek, shut it close before anything erupts. Surprisingly….

“Alohomora” worked.

There was a monstrous dog, filling all space between ceiling and floor. It had three heads. Six eyes, three noses, three drooling mouths and several rows of yellowish fangs. It growled. The door fell back in place. They ran, almost flew back down the corridor.

“A Cerberus! A bloody Cerberus locked up in a school! Wait till my father knows!” Draco fumes and Ron nods, because even bravery has a limit.

Harry trades a look with Hermione, he sighs. The answer is that there is not an answer. The Three-Headed-Dog stands upon a trap-door, guards something. Is it another room, a new challenge, a different... truth?

What is a knowledge, but an illusion?

***          

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of theory this time... ^^
> 
> smilingcrescent has successfully unveiled my author. It is in fact Friedrich Nietzsche, starting with "The Birth of Tragedy"...
> 
> Well, till the next time!


	8. Interpretation

„Dear Henry,“ the letter read.

Mr. Malfoy, ever the proper nobleman, favours the written form if writing, may the fact go eliminated, that Harry’s blood traitor parents named him indeed a “Harry”. Just “Harry”. How plebeian!

At least, Harry mused, Mr. Malfoy’s efforts to valorise Harry did not result in an “Eimeric” or something of an equal pomposity. But what is a proper Dark Lord’s name if not “Eimeric the Evil?” And whereas history has that a Richard can stand by numbers, what can be done with a good old Tom? Thomas the Tall – dark, handsome? Thomas the Traitorous, as the general opinion has. Full of twists and turns, challenging and complex is Thomas the Tortuous. For a torture it is, not to know!

“Dear Henry,” the letter read. It arrived just now and possibly late, and offered information as follows –

“I am honoured by your interest in the “Essays” and pleased to narrate to you what little I am able to let you know.

The book in question had initially belonged to my late father, Abraxas Lucius Malfoy, renown for his keen interest in the Old Ways. It was gifted to him by a like-minded colleague, and albeit obscure, it provides a unique viewpoint, I assessed, you might take a delight in.

Glad to be proven right, I beg you tell me if there be anything more you desire.

Sincerely, I am,

Lucius Malfoy”.

***

To acclaim or to discard, that is the question.

If nothing can be seen at the face value, there is always a doubt. “Death of Merlin” is an outrageous book, but only if T.M. is trusted to render a valid judgement. If anything, Mr. Malfoy’s letter indicates to take the “Essays” seriously. Paper kills not. Whatever causes Lord Malfoy discomfort, enhances the elusive tendencies, it is about the humans influenced by the book. Despite the initial fiasco, a number of powerful old families must know about the “Essays”. Chances are, the Dark Lord knows about the “Essays”, has seen to the consequences. In the case that the Dark Ritual exists, that the Dark Lord lives, and the Dark Lord is proficient in the Dark Ritual, it becomes an imperative that Harry, as the supposed Chosen One, grows.     

The crux behind T.M.’s conception is the thoroughness of his work. He painstakingly lists his sources, many of which Harry recognises as veridical variations to old muggle tales, born long before the Stature of Secrecy came into force. Harry suspects, that even if he sifts through the library, he will hardly find other opinions than those already represented. The uniqueness of T.M.’s conclusion cannot be retraced to the singularity of his data, but to the peculiar kind, T.M. pieces the information together.      

It appears a valid kind to piece information together.

As seem the alternatives.

If Harry is to know that the Dark Ritual exists, he must either detect an example of the non-mythical quality, or do it himself.

What are the exact steps to a Dark Ritual? What makes someone capable of the Dark Ritual? Is Harry the Chosen One?

Is there a proof that Lord Voldemort has accomplished a deed exceptionally outstanding? Was Harry to receive “Essays” because the Dark Lord can, thus Harry at disadvantage; or he cannot, and it is nothing but a pile of ideological rubbish to mud Harry’s mind; or he cannot, but if Harry learns, Harry prevails.

And then, there is Lily Evans.

***

It takes a month to stir the eyesight-correcting potion, and a little over an hour for the potion to take effect, once applied. Therefore, Professor Snape dutifully invites Harry to his office, where a cushioned armchair is, seats the boy. Of the potion three drops each vanish in the boy’s eyes, and once he closes his eyes, another cup he swallows. For an hour, Harry is to keep his eyes closed, as Professor watches - less the boy’s misbehaviour ruins the effects of the potion. As Harry sits at the Professor’s mercy, Harry asks the most threatening question.

“According to the yearbook, Sir, you were born the same month as my mother. Correspondingly, to Hogwarts you went together. As you probably knew my mother, what was she like? Can you teach me of her interests? Her particular talents…?”

There is the sound of coal, as it squeaks in the fireplace. Nargles steal dim clouds that Harry exhales. As professor reacts with a long drawn – “Absolutely! I should show you a meaningful array of memories!”

Unfortunately, you cannot see.

The minutes trickle off.

“Shown an array of memories, how can you interpret them correctly, if you never knew Lily Evans?”

An evaded topic, which always hangs in the air. The man, that sees Harry’s eyes and sees not Harry. He wants to share a silent word. He can.

“You will rest your eyes. You will trust my way to see Lily Evans”.

Dare I say, you will trust me.

***

Severus Snape narrates he was born in the same neighbourhood as Lily Evans, the two keeping each other’s company from the childhood and up to their fifth year at Hogwarts. It was in fact the afternoon after their last of the OWL examinations that a Severus Snape, still in thought about all the answers to all the questions, gets cornered by a usual set of imbecile Gryffindors. Severus must have had expected that the least than pristine academic accomplishments of said Gryffindors in the above-mentioned OWL examinations, would lead the said Gryffindors to seek a retaliation against their betters. But a moment of carelessness, and Severus finds himself in a tight spot. Then, the appearance of Lily Evans, who demands, the malefactors let Severus go. Severus protests her involvement. Him escapes the demeaning “Mudblood” in relation to the Muggleborn Lily Evans. Lily walks away. She never returns to Severus, even though Severus apologies repeatedly. She condemns Severus’ Death Eater ties.

She dies.

“That day - my worst memory”, chuckles Professor Snape. “My goody two shoes best friend and significant other of way too many years abandons me for a heat-of-the-moment insult and a bandwagon of ideology! Pitiful! Pathetic! Laughable…

Unless…

Unless you consider the worst memory of one Lily Evans. It was the day, why, it was the day, as Lily Evans was not sorted in Slytherin“.

***

“My Lily was brilliant, exceptionally talented in Charms and Potions, yet overall, there was not a subject of Lily’s interest, that evaded Lily. Even as a child, as we first discovered our magic, Lily was dreamlike and extraordinary. She was the wealthy peasant girl to my rank of an impoverished noble. By virtue of our merits alone, she would be a princess and me a prince.

We were children. We were magical. We believed in the fairy tales.”

Air is thick. Harry fades into his green armchair, as Professor recollects. There is but a voice of a distant memory, an ardent voice –

“My mother’s side of the family was traditionally affiliated with the Noble House of Slytherin. And the beautiful, brilliant, ambitious Lily… Prideful and popular, powerful Lily, she was the perfect Slytherin.

However, the fact has that the Sorting Hat requires at least one magical parent for the child to attend Slytherin.

Lily wanted to be in Slytherin. In our naivety, we thought, we could make something new, to change history.  Certainly, there can be something new after a thousand of years of the same old music.

Alas, it was for her passionate self, that the Hat placed Lily in Gryffindor.

She was devastated. She was used to get whatever she desires, once she truly exerts herself. But here, for the first time in Lily’s life, she stood afore a shut door, rejected, as if “she did not belong”.

She did not belong to this Old World of Magic.”

***

“You asked me, what Lily liked...” There is a snap, as Professor leaves his chair; creaks, as he paces the room. His voice but a wuthering current -

“Lily liked… but “like” is a grave understatement, Lily Loved Magic. Coming from a muggle household, she understood magic as something wonderful and unexpected. It was a miracle granted to her and her alone, for her sister Petunia’s failed attempt to join Hogwarts.

It was unnatural. There was no reason for a Lily Evans to have magic. As she attended Hogwarts and for years to come, it would be her worst nightmare, this fear she loses her Magic. That she wakes up.

It was for this reason alone, that Lily did not try harder with Petunia. That she could not pretend to be more muggle. Instead, she evaded Ministry’s edict by practicing wandless spells in the holidays, before her sister's hurt, envious, frightened eyes. She, craving to reassure herself, that she still has magic.

She truly loved Magic. Her spells, Lily always put her whole heart behind them. Perfect for the Dark Magic, as it needs to be felt, not just done, Lily provoked a corporeal Patronus on her very first try. It was a doe. A shimmering white doe, as if to symbolise Lily’s demand, her flagrant quest to be One of Us, One of Magic.

To be called a “Mudblood”, why, it was a hit upon Lily’s worst fear and vulnerabilities, her very right to possess magic. She had all the qualities of a Pureblood Lady with the exception of blood, and it was Lily’s goal, her ambition born out of the wounded self-esteem to marry a Lord and Heir from a Most Noble House. To be throughout reassured of her status within the wizarding society.

Lily’s act of assistance, however, it was not acceptable to me. Whereas Lily is fiercely protective of those, she considers her own; where my refusal defied the fact that I was hers... If I could not stand for myself, how could I ever hope to make her _mine_?

What other chances at wealth and influence I had, if not with the Dark, as the Dark challenged the given order and made opportunities? More than a Snape, a true Prince I ought to be to satisfy my Lily and Lily’s wounded pride. Yet it was Lily’s wounded pride that let Lily Evans to despise anything Dark. The Dark, which rejected her.

 How perfectly we understood each other, how similar we are. The peasant girl and the impoverished noble, lost in the world of magic and politics, weakness against weakness, it became too painful to be with each other, to see what we could have been.

We parted each on the quest of our own. As time passed, and us lost underway, as Potter was the one that wanted her, she had to want the Lord Potter…”

 ***

How he spats this name, “Potter”, this sad man, as he recounts an unfortunate prince’s tale. His horse was slow and his spear old and his armour rusty. Valiant fool, he stands no chance for this princess’ hand, as he faces his enemy, the posh and well-fed one.

One question left, however, what is there known of the princess’ heart?

“Did my mother… Did she love James Potter?”

He is startled out of his musings, reminded of Harry’s existence. Once more, he remains silent, as if arguing with himself. Then, he sits down and conspiratorially, he tells the last secret.

“Love? She certainly loved the security, the standing. How he showered Lily with affection as if a goddess by mistake visiting Earth. She spoke to him with sweet tenderness, with care. She was lovely, they said. That as Lily matures, she expectedly mellows… And yet, yet…

I never saw such a passion in Lily’s eyes, as when she stood afore _him_.

One man Lily truly wanted? Why, it would be the Dark Lord. He is… not exactly human. He is overwhelming, his Magic is. And Lily, Magic adoring Lily, she must have felt the proverbial moth drawn to the blaze of his Magic. She knew, he would be the death of her. That is why she refused, as I know, as he asked that she becomes a follower.

I did not realise then, she was only deferring the inevitable...”

The bandage jerked off Harry’s eyes, for now -

“Now, you can see”, insists Professor.

“Yes, thank you. I can”.

There is the act, the suspect and the motive.

Lily Evans, that gave herself over to Magic.

When she defied the Dark Lord, making him to see her.

As she protected what there was of her own…

Protected Harry.   

***

“Dear Sir,

I am a Hogwarts student affiliated to Slytherin, having grown frustrated about the ways Magic is presented at Hogwarts. We ever learn how to swing our wands and articulate formulae with a perfect pronunciation, instead of being taught what really is Magic. How is it that wizards can use Magic. What are the true magical boundaries?

Hearing my questions, a friend of the family gifted me with a book, your book. It was a copy of your “Essays”, and greatly welcomed at mine.

Admittedly, I have yet to read past your “Death of Merlin”, yet now, that I have so many more questions, it is your help alone that gives me hope.

From your narration I conclude, that I could never comprehend Magic, unless I truly see Magic with the help of the Dark Ritual. I understand, that it is a dangerous approach, yet there is evidence for both – that the ability to perform the Dark Ritual is at least partially hereditary, whereas my mother herself has successfully executed a Dark Ritual at least once. Sadly, she died afore being able to pass on her knowledge.

Such prompts me in my impatience to seek your advice and instruction. May I hope that you are of the ability and volition to teach me under the cover of Darkness to see what hidden is.

Yours faithfully,

Harry Potter.”      

He writes the letter twice. The first, he asks Draco to forward to a Lucius Malfoy, with an expression of sincere hopes it reaches a Thomas Myrddin.

The other, he gives to Hermione, with an instruction, she covers it by the same outer envelope, she sends the next letter to her parents with. Opened and resorted at the post station, mediating between the wizarding and the muggle worlds, Harry’s letter then begins an adventure of its own, as it is addressed to a Thomas Myrddin.   

Harry waits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Harry" is the traditional verbal form to "Henry". 
> 
> The saying "Tom, Dick and Harry" is used with the meaning of "everyone/anyone", as it consists of truly common names. 
> 
> (Richard the Third). 
> 
> White Stag, and by association White Doe, evokes according to Wikipedia the following associations - 
> 
> "The Celts believed that the white stag would appear when one was transgressing a taboo, such as when Pwyll tresspassed into Arawn's hunting grounds. Arthurian legend states that the creature has a perennial ability to evade capture; and that the pursuit of the animal represents mankind's spiritual quest. It also signalled that the time was nigh for the knights of the kingdom to pursue a quest."
> 
> Till the next time and <3


	9. Otherwise

It was the early afternoon, that the persistent sunrays jumped windows and flooded a distinguished couch of emerald green and silver. Figuratively speaking, of course, since a couch made of precious metals and gemstones would be not the most convenient a couch. The light crawled all the way up Hadrian’s skin – from fingertips to his eyes, as if an alarm clock. Only two weeks from now, that for the first time in his life Hadrian attends Hogwarts not a visitor but a pupil.

Hadrian knows all about Hogwarts, as it was the school his parents went to. The school, which is currently the last abode to an Albus Dumbledore and the Light Party, yet Hadrian’s father is one of the Dark Lord’s most accomplished. For weeks now, Hadrian’s parents along with his Cousin Draco’s parents discussed the danger and benefits of choosing either Hogwarts or Durmstrang. Aunt Narcissa ardently argued to try the native school first. Aunt Narcissa may act cold and proper in public, yet her family is her weakness. For her family, she burns.

Not so Hadrian’s mother Lily, the younger of the Black sisters. Lily that enters the room now, beautiful and proper and cold. In a dress the colour of her eyes, contrastive to her pale skin and a wave of red hair. Not too tall – and Hadrian inherits his mother’s slim build, but no less imposing with the strength of her calm and her wisdom.

Hadrian stretches and gives his mother a customary peck on the warm cheek, but it is Hadrian’s book, sprawled on the cherry tree coffee table, that catches Lily’s interest. It is “The Standard Book of Spells” by Mrs. Miranda Goshawk, required for Hadrian’s very first Charms class. Lily is a true Charms genius, though Hadrian’s father believes her no less adept at Potions too. Most of the time the Prince pair is found either in their first floor study crafting spells, the library for research, or in the manor’s basement, where several rooms are dedicated to the experimental potions brewing. It is their personal tall tale, that Hadrian himself was conceived, as Lily and Severus felt sufficiently dedicated to the Dark Lord’s demand after a new and most potent fertility potion to help increasing the Pureblood population, that they ran the preliminary tests themselves.

“Well, well, Wingardium Leviosa?” Lily opens the book, where Hadrian left it slide. “Want to try out?” and Lily’s eyes are glowing, and she laughs, as if a different person. Lily is in love. With magic. It is a good thing, Hadrian’s father shares his wife’s excitement, or such would be one jealous an affair. Lily is cold, because it is to Magic, that she offers most of the feelings, she has.

“Come!” cries out his mother, bites her lip in a childish way. Instantly begins explanations, where her one hand grasps Hadrian’s shoulder and makes him see. The hand is warm too.

“Just imagine how it would be to fly. How delightful!” and she sings, she sings the spell, and every single piece of furniture in the dining room jerks awake and dances in the air. Moves circles around Hadrian and his mother. Then Lily dances herself – “Have not I overdone! But don’t you love it?”, as if a white flower caught in a water current, she swirls, and them swirl, her red hair, dress green.

Now you, Hadrian Severus Prince, named after two of the Roman Emperors, now you, - Harry tightens his eyes before opening them wide, determined. He stands in the middle of the Slytherin Boys Dorm, wand in hand and imagines the beds ceiling high. He whispers – “Wingardium Leviosa”, but it is only his chair that rises above the floor level.

“Weak” Harry mumbles. “You are weak”, weak and ungifted. A lie. Harry is well capable of passing his classes. He studies, he pays attention, never needs more than few tries to learn a spell.

“The Dark Magic is felt, not just done.” Harry recites, and Harry feels… Harry feels!

It makes no difference.

***

_“What knows a human actually of himself! He turns and twists, and what there is to see? Conceals the Nature not the very most from him, of his own Magic even…?”_

***

“Miss Evans”, the Death Eater bid his goodbyes, thanking whatever gods, that Ms. Evans was sufficiently distracted by this night’s events to forego the customary nagging for more blood, hair and fingernails. The collection of blood, hair and fingernails in Ms. Evans’ rear chambers was one of the reasons Ms. Evans was not to be joked around. The other reasons being Ms. Evans’ legendary temper, her position as the Dark Lord’s very own Ritual Master, and certainly young Eimeric himself, her son.

This night, first May night, Ms. Evans, a sensual woman of thirty-three, is in charge of the Beltane celebrations. As the custom has and the Dark Lord desires, two offerings will be made, the devotions of War and of Peace.

There is a great prejudice against Dark Magic, part of which are the rumoured human sacrifices. Ms. Evans has personally seen to the prisoners whose blood and bone and cries will empower the Death Eaters this new year. The muggles are the War offering, as there cannot be any better. Eimeric’s mother says so, his father does. His father made sure, Eimeric knows all there is about the Ritual Magic.

Regarding the sacrifices, it is to be noted, that not only the will of the Ritual Master influences the Magic’s decision to grant the desired outcome, but the cravings of the sacrifice too. The more powerful and self-conscious the sacrifice, as humans and magical creatures are, the more influence they take on the ways their energy can be spent. There is a limited range of Rituals, which rely on the unwilling sacrifices, on their anger and fear and resignation, on the hatred and despair to be forced to abandon their tangible appearances and return to Magic. In the same vein as the sacrifices get hurt, the Ritual Master asks Magic for violence and bloodshed, for death and pain. As the basic feelings of the sacrifices and the Ritual Master coincide, the Magic is at its strongest.

It follows, that for the destructive Rituals non-magical humans and creatures are preferable to their magical counterparts, as they would otherwise use their Magic against the success of the Ritual. Contrariwise, a willing, strong sacrifice is required for creative Rituals, those focused on prosperity and protection. A Ritual, where a gentle Lady exchanges her beauty for her dear husband’s swift recovery, be it even from Dragon Pox! When a young priestess offers her life in exchange for her home’s safety. One’s blood is given for little favours now and then, one’s soul in the pursuit of immortality.

Much can emerge from the Ritual Magic, if not limited by the human sense of self-preservation. The traditional Peace Ritual is the offer of love and virginity, and the initial reason at least one part of the newly joined pair should retain their innocence. Amongst odorant fruit and soft flowers then, the beeswax candles and harp play, there is fresh blood shed, red lips joined. The offer of innocence and love freely given, by Magic taken, forever lasts.

It was for Ms. Evans’ passion for the Dark Lord, that she abandons her some time boyfriend James Potter and the Light Side. It is her first time to prove herself and her loyalties that Ms. Evans is chosen as the virginal sacrifice to the Dark Lord’s feet. There is initially little luck that follows, murmurs loud, her assumingly strong magic is flawed, tainted for her Muggleborn origins. Then, Ms. Evans is reputedly pregnant as that Night’s outcome. An event exceedingly rare, for her child is the one chosen by Magic. Her Eimeric is Heir-de-Mort, the fruit of her love.

This year, though, it is Eimeric himself, who plays the sacrifice. Who closes the cycle of life and destruction, laid upon a bed of flower petals and incense burning, hot, sweet and spicy. 

Of no help, of no help it is, that Harry’s heart beats loudly, whenever he thinks of Thomas.

***

_“In a similarly limited sense the human desires truth. He longs for the pleasant, life sustaining truths; to the pure, of no consequences insight, he is indifferent. The harmful and destructive truths he opposes._

_What is then the Truth?_

_But an army of the inter-human relations, conversed by the whimsical language into the long used schemata. Many years pass, they appear as laws. The truths are illusions, of which one forgot that they are, because for this human the human is of all things the measure. They are abstractions, no longer powerful in their meaning, as they stay severed from their roots. And a dream, where the whole Nature lionises the human, but only a dream. They are Magic that lost its colours, and is therefore “Spells”.”_

***

“Of truths and lies of the human kind” next Essay is called. It answers not Harry’s prayers for instruction on the Dark Ritual. It reflects Thomas’ anger with his judgemental readers, an affront upon the human society to believe in a just, that is a congenial, world.

Harry sits surrounded by three apples and two candles to focus his magic upon and imagines a great variety of things he wishes to feel and repeats “Wingardium Leviosa”. It works as it always works.

Harry abandons his pursuits into Magic to knock on Professor Quirrell’s office door. Professor hastily cleans his desk from any stray papers he perused, invites Harry inside. Since it is Harry, Professor Quirrell waves his hand and the insistent smell of garlic is no more.

Aside from being the Chosen One, there is little exceptional about Harry. Harry doubts, he is suitable to discover the powers within to become an outer power, even though Harry is his mother’s son. T.M. mentions the hypothesis how the majority of the Dark Ritual practitioners within the same culture were relatives of each other, thus the probability of the same potent magical blood that flew across their veins, of heritability.

Professor Quirrell is sceptical of the blood influence. He questions both – the nature and nurture.

“It would be foolish to ignore the achievements of Old. Many a tradition had an initial sense before becoming a tradition, and therefore something entirely different. And who wishes to re-invent the wheel, instead of designing a carriage? Yet honouring the achievements of Old, one strives to become an entity of one’s own, mingling talents and wealth, education, ambition and persistence...  

Pureblood beliefs are such a human thing, after all.”

“I lack instruction. I lack exercise. My blood is my blood only”, summarises Harry, Professor nods. Professor denies Harry any help with exercise and instructions, for them not covered by “Essays” as far as Professor knows. T.M. writes many words and interprets many truths by words from the human language. He writes of Magic, but not how to do Magic. He is an observer, not a committer.  Yet what does Magic care for the human delusions?

Harry nods, offers Professor an imaginary smile.

An elusive “Thank you”. Drinks a cup of tea. Compatible silence. Run away time.

Woe rings true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Excerpts after F. Nietzsche - "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense".
> 
> Eimeric as a medieval form of Harry. 
> 
> That is for the chapter, and I love, I love your response.


	10. Worlds

“The snake bites of its own tail, as the Light’s saviour pursues Dark Arts. Albeit, it is not the Dark Arts that you seek after, if your letter is to be trusted. Dark Arts’ bad reputation is based upon the use of the almost exclusively human and certainly unwilling sacrifices. The hidden magic, you inquire of, is perceived as worse even.

It is a well-known human habit to glorify martyrs. Self-sacrifice for the Greater Good makes you a Saint. Everyone adores saints, but secretly thinks them another species altogether. Someone not average, unnatural and not to be imitated.

The pinnacle of the omnipresent Christian religion, Jesus himself, has been stylised to an idol, to be revered. They celebrate his life, recite teachings, pray, and least of all – emulate him. Insane he is, who turns the other cheek if once beaten! Who embraces those sick and improper, and different, even enemies, as if his equals. Who of his own volition dies for the sins not his own?!

The Dark Lord is well known to have self-mutilated himself in his strive for power. Apparently, and in the public opinion such a self-sacrifice is regarded a higher sin, than torturing others. Speaking plainly, he is the worst of them all not for the actual murder of his fellow humans, but for endangering the inherent idea of human invulnerability.

Have you ever read “The Tales of Beedle the Bard”? The five of them are counted among the wizarding children’s classics, with “The Warlock’s Hairy Heart” being canonically interpreted as a Dark Wizard’s quest for the invulnerability going astray, as such an invulnerability defies human nature. In fact, the first fundamental Law of Magic, as worded by Adalbert Waffling states –

“Tamper with the deepest mysteries – the source of life, the essence of self – only if prepared for consequences of the most extreme and dangerous kind”.

There is a natural limit to what the human species can and cannot do, is and is not. In truth, it is not the invulnerability that the warlock from the tale seeks after, what the Dark reaches out for. In truth, it is the explicit understanding of one’s own limits, which the Light side implicitly denies. More so, and throughout scared of its own mortality, it twists the words and heaven and hell emerge.

The continuity of the human race being the basic principle of life, it condemns both suicide and self-sacrifice, as such question the very need to live. Especially among muggles it is oftentimes less important, if a child will be well cared for once born, rather than the selfish desire for a child its parents have. Citing religion; the hope to keep one’s husband from leaving… For one’s own old age well-fare; for a family’s continuation. “Because it is, how it always was”.

Senseless, impaired lives, cold and hungry. So many of you. Are you happy? Won’t you be happier as something else? Many a creature was hunted to the brink of extinction. Limiting the human population, why, it is not necessarily the bad thing.

Quantity versus quality, such is the first difference between the muggle and wizarding population, yet both forget, that them but a passing moment in the great scope of things.

Only magic is eternal.

To return to your question, this Dark Magic you ask after, it is not a quest for invulnerability, but setting priorities. To exchange something subjectively less valuable for something more valuable. If a warlock values a sharp mind more than a flighty heart, he cuts out the heart and weds the mind, enhancing mind. Blindness to colours helps listen. Studying of a subject takes the time, when a different topic or a leisure activity could be approached. You cannot stay awake at the same time as you sleep.

In an everyday choice and in a Dark Ritual, for something you desire, what are you willing to give up?

What shall you offer?”

***

It has taken a few days and a rise in restlessness, and Harry about to plunder the Restricted Section, again, that one afternoon he finds a blank envelope on his pillow. It must have been Draco having sorted through his father’s last package, that put the envelope on Harry’s pillow. Plain yellowish envelope with a single piece of parchment inside and adored curvy letters. Not a name uttered, no signature placed, but a few strokes. Having consulted the library, Harry decides it is the Futhark rune for “T” or assumedly “Thomas” – the Tiwaz rune.

It is only from the third year on that Ancient Runes are taught at Hogwarts, and Harry wonders if “Thomas” is correctly transliterated from “Thorn”, and this “T”, it alludes differently.

“Tiwaz”, Harry reads, is Tyr, the Nordic God of Battle and Victory through Self-Sacrifice. And Tyr is but a mask to an older and mightier entity, Dyeus, the heavenly, the Divine. And his spear - the pillar of world order.  

The rune “Tiwaz”, worn-out text assures, in blood red drawn, historically it was thought to help bundling worldly and over-worldly energies as if of a single entity to be used within magical ritual.    

Employed in combination with other runes, the effect varies. “Quick Victory” promises a union of “Tiwaz” and “Sowilo”, and Harry laughs. He was not yet aware, that there is a sun shining from his forehead.

***

Thomas’ letter was not helpful.

Not helpful.

Harry pushes it to the back of his mind, turns a page. This essay is conveniently called “On Ancient Magic” and promises to evaluate how powerful wizards thought, based upon their personality and circumstances, for ideas are born from experience, and it is in the best of days that humans live what they know.

Helga Hufflepuff, writes Thomas, believed that Earth was the origin of all things. If plants emerge from earth and humans were from mud shaped, why not everything else too? But, if all things are Earth, - _“Everything is One”._

Indeed, Helga Hufflepuff dedicated her life to studying plants born from earth. And to her House she accepted everyone as long as they were willing.

“We are one”, she said. “One and the Same”.

“One”.

***

“Everything is Water” states Salazar Slytherin. “Water flows”.

_“Wherefrom the things come, whereto they must go._

_Observation supports, that each single human is a being that really should not be, but atones for his existence with a variety of suffering and death. What “comes” is a punishable break from the eternal Is. Human life, water, and every single property, since there is an enormous evidence that it shall not last._

_Which is eternal therefore, the Magic, has no distinct features to not withstand time, but because of its indefiniteness it is immortal and forever. Magic paints circles in water, ephemeral “to become”…_

_How can something not last, that a Right has to be?”_

“Of what worth truly is your existence, humans?” Salazar said. “But otherwise, what are you for?”

“As we must die, we shall die”.

“Die!”

***

My Lord Voldemort, a developmental portrait based on the Death Eater aims, are you a spoiled pureblood, a happy-murdering psychopath, even a tragic hero?

Comparing Voldemort to his apparent muggle counterpart Adolf Hitler, Harry feels less inclined to make a decision. Hitler propagandised persons blond and blue eyed, had dark eyes and dark hair. Vouched for a large number of children, had not any. Wished to be an artist, grew a dictator…

A person’s alleged “ideals” can be a reflection of their reality; can be something fundamentally different from themselves, fuelled by the sense of the self-insufficiency, self-hatred even.

Can be but wishes of potential supporters, adapted for the value of gaining such supporters, and at least initially of an importance.

Even if My Lord Voldemort has given some thought on the topic of blood purity and it is not by a mere whim and the recipe of “How to be Evil”, that he amused himself with slaughtering muggles and slaughtering muggleborns… Has he pursued such because it was what he was – a stuck-up pureblood heir; he was not, but he quite desired – this opposite of his own entity, as a penniless mudblood orphan; he was not and cared not, and his origins inconsequential - but he rather had to…

What is a Dark Lord without followers?

*** 

In accordance to his desire to right the fundamental wrong of the human existence, Salazar Slytherin is famous for developing a series of poisons and torture methods, leading the victim to a most painful, “atoning” death. Several scholars further credit Slytherin with the creation of Cruciatus Curse, as administered long enough it virtually destroys the victim’s mind and body.

Rowena Ravenclaw was a quick-witted woman, which astutely recognised her mind is her best feature. When Rowena pronounces Air as the origin of all things, she both refers to Slytherin’s concept of the ever-changing water, and reveres its lightest, gasiform state. 

If there are the eternal, intangible world of Magic that is; the fleeting world of manifest features, that comes, but negates itself in its finiteness… How can the manifest – our living world be justified?

Rowena goes a step beyond Salazar.

Rowena compares the manifest properties to assess that these properties are not all the same, but aligned in a primal antagonism.  Things can be light and heavy, thick and thin, warm and cold, male and female, light and dark. Whereby “Dark” is merely a negation of the basic property – “Light”, its negative equivalent. Rowena categorises every single feature either as Light-Positive or Dark-Negative, more so – Light-Positive-Being and Dark-Negative and Not-Being.

Our World itself, therefore, consists of things that “are” and things that “are not”, with things Dark-Negative-Not-Being responsible for both the vexatious decay and new birth, since Light on its own is eternal. But for the end and the begin of all things, Light can desire the Dark – their child a new creation. Light can despise the Dark, and things go by.

“But wait!”, cries Rowena, “What is not, is Not! What is, it Is!”

_“How can something be that is a Not-Being?”_

No, whatever Is, _truly is_ , it must perfect and eternal and never-changing, as it must Always be, and it must be One. Rowena denies the contradiction between the eternal Magic and fleeting appearances, as she denies “appearances” –

_“Follow not the foolish eye, nor the unreliable hearing, stupid tongue. Alone with the Power of Mind shall you judge what the Truth is!”_

“The senses deceive”, insists Rowena, “Just as they pretend, that the change in the world exists. But it does not! All lies!

Throw away your fleeting bodily experiences and seek for the true knowledge, the knowledge of abstract spiritual thought. The logical idea of truth is the compliance of an insight with the general rules of reason. It suffices to think the _idea of existence_ to reach out for it, to determine the Absolute through cognition. _I think and therefore I cognize the World for what the World truly is_ “.

“The Idea of the World”

***

Godric Gryffindor’s restless soul, of course, he interjects that even the thought alone is a process, and a change and a movement. And if all senses are but appearances, therefore not-really-are, how can something that not-even-is be capable of deception?

“The world I touch, see and feel, is the World that is,” believes Godric. “And if anything is eternal in this world, it is the Movement. “

There are many, infinitely many substances, assumes Godric, each different, independent and real and steady. And then, there is the “Fire”, which is an additional substance, responsible for all movement, as it moves the other substances, moves them together. The Fire moves arbitrarily, somewhen a blaze, then a candle. Moves them from the initial Chaos at the Begin of Time, to an ordered existence, a Cosmos, where all things similar lie next to each other. Warm things get grouped together, just as wet things and hard things and thick things, and a step further – the Light becomes one, as does Darkness, together defining Earth. 

As if imitating the Creation of Life by creation of school, Godric suggests to divide Hogwarts into four Houses, where those students who are similar, can easier build a natural unity by moving within the reach of each other. Once asked, what he loves the most about Hogwarts, Godric said –

_“That I can see the sky and the whole order of the universe a part of it”._

***

In the same vein as Lord Voldemort is known to dispread hatred, Albus Dumbledore supports a philosophy of love.

In a world, where everything is potentially not what it seems to be, wherefrom Dumbledore’s belief in Love comes?

The books are both wordy and silent about Hogwarts’ Headmaster. Not a mention of wife or husband, lover or family. What is Dumbledore’s love? Love for the students whom he hardly interacts personally with, even his Chosen One was approached in a three months but once. For muggles, whom he lives distinctly separate from? Is it his love for Politics? For Science? For knowledge, that fuels Dumbledore? What or whom does the Headmaster love, as deeply and faithfully as definition of love suggests?

There are different kinds of love, for Love is not something absolute, nor absolutely instinctual. Whereas Harry happened to develop a Love for books, there is a general mistrust towards humans, seeing that even Harry’s supposed family, the Dursleys, those to be his caretakers and closest persons have not taught Harry of love, as they never loved Harry.

Harry’s obsession with T.M., why, - because for now and out of Harry’s perspective his Thomas is little more than a book.

To return to the case of Albus Dumbledore, however, is he a person to go to the great lengths to hide any mention of his loved ones – out of shame, fear or possessiveness? Would he mourn a lost lover or family, idolising them now, idolising love? Could he have never known love, as he had not dared to love truly, utterly, and now he lives regretting his past choices, ashamed of himself, longing for love? Or would he go as far as to stylise the concept of love, he never knew, to an overbearing god made of stone, precious gems, - as not to be lived, merely prayed to?!

***

Merlin, being Salazar Slytherin’s prized pupil, he adopts the division into two worlds, with one World of Being, where the Gods, or simply - Magic reside, and the other – Our World of Become. But unlike Slytherin, Merlin embraces Our World. As it is, - of creation and destruction, of coming to existence and death, bare of any moral judgement, it is the Magic’s very own playground - innocent, happy to shape, to watch, then try something new. Our world as an artwork worthy of its creator, a worthy world.

It is the world, which cyclically burns down, to be reborn out of its ashes, head high and outrageously proud. Where everything holds itself and the opposite of itself, on a sliding scale from sweet to bitter, always sweet and bitter, - but a moment’s flavour, fugacious, we perceive it now, and different then. It is a living, dynamic world, where Many are born out of One in the act of the primordial Hubris.      

_“Life is a game, only a Game! Magic’s Game!“_

Why so serious, silly?!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "On Ancient Magic" after F. Nietzsche's "Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks".
> 
> In the runic alphabet of futhark "T" is represented by the "Tiwaz" in the meaning of God Tyr, whereas "Th" is written with the rune "Thurisaz" [meaning a "giant"], which later became the letter "thorn". Perhaps, by using the "T" insted of "Th" Tom is about to suggest, he is indeed Tom and not Thomas? xD
> 
> That was one difficult chapter, if I myself say so. Thankfully Tom is soon leaving school (and Nietzsche university) and begins to write about more mundane things he himself sees and approaches instead of fishing in the minds of some Ancient and Famous. 
> 
> (Rowena Ravenclaw as a forerunner to the wizarding Platonism, why not?)
> 
> And questions (reviews and remarks) are as always welcome!


	11. Stakes

_“And while you’re searching, ponder this;_

_We’ve taken what you’ll sorely miss,_

_An hour long you’ll have to look,_

_Too late, it’s gone, it won’t come back.”_

***

The snow has not yet covered Hogwarts overnight with the thick layer of wet, cold, shapeable, as on December the first, a Sunday, Harry’s group of friends gathered in one of the many unused classrooms on the castle’s seventh floor. There is nothing like a shared and dangerous secret to unite people, and on the next day after the discovery of a Cerberus rooming at Hogwarts, the group has officially found together, establishing a club. This club, also known as “The Overly Secret Society for Outstanding Magical Cooperation”, abbreviated - “Cosmos”, consisted of two Slytherins – Potter and Malfoy-Grabbe-Goyle, two Gryffindors – Weasley, Ron and the Longbottom, and the single sensitive flower within this arrangement of exuberant manliness – a Miss Granger of Ravenclaw. Taken that Cosmos was an exemplary club insofar as promoting inter-house collaboration, the very first club meeting was spent collectively gliding – or in Neville’s case oftentimes sliding down and up the corridors  of the magnificent old castle in search of a representative club room.

All that was free in the Dungeons was designed to be used as storage chambers and therefore exempt from the magical heating system. Accordingly, a warming charm is among the first things every sensible Slytherin thinks of if leaving the jovially acclimatised Common Room for places the sun never reached. It would be mildly inconvenient to apply the anti-icicle-prevention every time the club meets, thus the two participating Slytherins sighed and moved their four bodies upwards.

The other floors had windows and sitting arrangements, but these rooms were popular meeting opportunities to the general student population, be it a means to finish fifteen-inch essays on Urg the Unclean and the Goblin Rebellions, or snogging.  

“Eeew”, buckled Draco’s young face in horror after a simple “Alohomora” gave way to already sixth demonstration of juvenile hands on bum. “Woe, just imagine! Our pure and innocent Club Room brazenly defiled in our absence!”

They moved up, vivaciously engaged in a conversation on best locking, warding and cleaning charms. It is certainly due to Hermione’s unfailing Ravenclaw nature that the girl graciously accepted the added responsibility of sorting out the theory on this “cleaning matter”, some of the boys felt most uncomfortable about. Harry, not quite a traditionalist, winked.

It was on the seventh floor in the left corridor, that the club discussed their admittedly suboptimal space options, that suddenly a door appeared, providing windows, a fire place, couches, couch table and a supply of freshly brewed tea with scones.

“Yummy!” exclaimed Ron, not even bothering to swallow the cream covered bread, as Draco pointedly looked elsewhere.

Draco then painted a huge banner with the club’s full name, coat of arms and device to stretch across the room’s perimeter, and a second small one with words “OUR ROOM” to be hung directly over the entry door, and that is how the Cosmos Society meeting place was chosen.

***

“And the Dark Lord is known to have self-mutilated himself, how so?” Harry randomly throws a question in-between the two bites of shortbread and pouring a cup of tea.  

Now that Cosmos had a name and place, all that remained lost is a suitable pursuit. There was little special in a bi-weekly round of “How to play chess?”, nor are they another study group dedicated to passing the midterm exams with the flying colours. They were the best of the best, young, gifted, promising, - the Wizarding Future.  As they most definitely shall not risk their necks by following the trail of the Third Floor Corridor, they ought to seek something as exciting… but safe.

Good riddles are hard to come by. With Ron eating, Neville fidgeting, Hermione and Draco clustered upon a “Magical Me. The Gilderoy Lockhart’s Great Guide to Greatness”, Harry decides to introduce a question of his own.

“Fred and George said, that Charlie said, whom spoke to the father’s friends, which said… Argh!”, Ron was sputtering indignantly, having in his enthusiasm gathered a judgemental hit on the head from Draco, Hermione and Gilderoy for speaking with a mouth filled. As Mr. Lockhart was spinning upon his biography’s ornamental cover, as if to make sure he survived perfectly the collision with the ginger’s head, Neville cautiously chimed in.

“My Great Uncle Algie… You must know, my family thought I was all muggle for ages. So uncle Algie tried to force some magic out of me. Pushed me off the end of Blackpool Pier once. I nearly drowned. And that other time he accidentally let me fall from an upstairs window, but I bounced. All way down the road. Uncle was very pleased, so pleased, he bought me my toad.

Anyway, to make me see the need to get magic faster, you know, Uncle would tell me tales. Tales of You-Know-Who.”, Neville trembled visibly, but gathered his courage – “Tales of You-Know-Who. What he did and how he looked like and such. And he looked… you know his appearance…”

“What was with his appearance?” Harry trains his eyes upon Neville and gives him an encouraging smile.

“He had no ears, no hair, and deadly white skin. It is covered with scales, like a snake’s. There are horns coming from his forehead, as if a ram’s. His nose is long and protruding, as if a beak. Has these really long claws and teeth. “Bites your hand clean off”, as Uncle Algie used to say. Has black wings made of black smoke and a tail, he fights with, as if a whip. He wears an all red cloak, dyed from the blood of his victims. The cloak hides most of his body, but there is something wrong with his feet too. You-Know-Who has red eyes, but not human eyes. They are slit eyes, as if a cat’s. And his voice is like Cr-cr-cru-ci-a-ttttt-us.”

“Told Fred and George too”. Ron’s heart was to the sandwiches. “Those are bird’s feet. Definitely like a roaster. And he must not eat enough.” Ron assessed, taking another bite. “As he is all bones and skin too”.

“Yes, yes, that is exactly what they say in “The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts””, confirmed Hermione. “And “Modern Magical History”. The authors speculate that You-Know-Who might have looked more… human once. But because of his extensive use of Dark Magic…”

“His appearances permanently degraded”, took her by the word Harry. “Well, that actually makes sense… that the Dark Lord would be less bothered with appearances…”

“My father”, Draco decided to join on conversation, “My father told me that the Dark Lord was an exceptionally beautiful individual, whereas us – Malfoys, are known for their exceptionally fine tastes”.

An insult has already appeared on Ron’s mouth, when Harry tried to reason – “It can be a kind of the Halo Effect.

You know, muggle psychologists have noted that oftentimes one especially strong trait overshadows the general impression of a person. Like the Dark Lord was especially powerful, and Mr. Malfoy values power greatly. Therefore to Mr. Malfoy the Dark Lord’s power made him an attractive individual, whereas the other side thought how fearsome and cruel and Dark the Dark Lord was, what the Dark Lord’s reputation was, and therefore perceived him and his features in general a little more distorted and inhuman. It is the one thing overruling the other.”

Harry stretched his hands above a single red candle, Hermione brought with her today. It was, thankfully, a plain and a happily burning candle, as there was nothing wrong in wishing for a little warmth on this cold December afternoon.

***

“Tell me, Potter, - if everyone tells so, it must be so?”, Professor Snape drawls, eyes not leaving a boiling cauldron.

“Not necessarily, Sir. However, there is certain evidence, in how several accounts match”, Harry swallows a grimace, afore picking a handful of Wartcap essence to be crushed in a mortar.

“Well…” the potion is turquoise coloured, and Professor vigorously stirs it counter-clockwise, “Not many are aware of it, but the Dark Lord was a Shape-Shifter”.

“Shape-Shifter?” Harry asks through the clenched teeth. Because of Wartcap’s inane ability to form a thick hard crust whenever it touches skin, Harry has to work wearing his Dragon-hide gloves. Thick Dragon-hide gloves to a tiny pestle. “Sir, do you mean a Metamorphmagus?”

“No idea”, Professor shrugs, followed by a quick breathy whisper of – “I suspect, he took some joy scaring the Light silly, attempting forms most abominable, if facing them. It amused him. “

“But why?” Harry has difficulty to understand. “This world is all about appearances. If it was possible to him, why would not the Dark Lord go for something inconspicuous, beautiful even? Human’s judgement relies heavily on the eyes of the beholder, whereas many old languages have but a single word to express the notions of “beautiful” and “good”. Just imagine –

A fine day. Sun is shining. The Dark Lord takes a stroll to Diagon Alley. Alarmed, wizarding police, those Aurors appear. “Hands up! Give me your wand! Don’t even try anything funny” they ask of the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord has long golden curls, pristine skin and soft blue eyes, framed by thick eyelashes, wears all white. He comes to the most dutifully looking Auror and speaks with a warm voice “I am not a danger to you, my Child”.

His honey voice causes several females in the crowd to faint, as well as the female Auror, facing him.

This Auror is not as easily swayed – “You are the Dark Lord, and a menace to any lawful society!”, he spits. The Dark Lord seems unaffected by accusations alike. Instead, he works his hand through his hair in one swaying motion. The Official Dark Lord Fanclub is immediately founded nearby.

“But dear Child, how can someone as beautiful as myself be evil? Truly, I ask to reign the ministry, but that is done for your own well-being, as to relieve you from the shackles of a corrupt and damaging government.

Do not you agree?” the Dark Lord utters and the Dark Lord smiles, and even the hardest man’s knees buckle – “How can someone as beautiful be… bad?!”

“Yes, you are beautiful!” screams the crowd, three especially able witches and a wizard duel over the presidency of Our Dark Lord’s Fanclub. The Dark Lord blows kisses with his most elegant pale hands, signs autographs with red and black lipstick directly upon devoted wizards and witches skin. They conjure him a palanquin, so the Dark Lord can lie alluringly dignified, as he is carried down to the Ministry, where the minister himself becomes the venerable Fanclub member number three thousand and sixty and knows no greater joy, than to serve his Lord his afternoon tea.

And that is how the Dark Lord took control of the wizarding Britain. “

“You have quite an imagination, indeed”, Professor Snape sniggers. His brew by now reaches an emerald green.

“I dare say, Sir, it is one of my best features,” reddens Harry. He was sufficiently encompassed in his imagination to forget all about the Wartcap mortar.

“Why, I suggest, in case that the Dark Lord is not truly… dead” - and here Professor Snape‘s hands rise to mock-paint a pair of quotation marks, - “teach him of this brilliant strategy. It might just save us much grief”.

And on the other note – “Wartcap powder?”

“Right here, Sir”.

***

Harry chuckled, then turned a page. Added a bookmark to the mix, then closed his book, so as to show a blank envelope of dark paper he covered the book with, being far more confident in his glue and scissors skills, than the advanced pretence magic.

By now, there was no one in the Defence against the Dark Arts classroom, except for a Harry faced with an amused looking Professor Quirrell.

“Well”, instigated Professor Quirrell, “It almost appears, as if you take delight in my classes – being all smiles and laughter, and not wishing to part!”

Harry’s eyelashes flutter, as Harry demonstratively bites his lip and assumes a most innocently zestful facial expression – “Sir, Sir, they are my favourite!” He adds as if an afterthought, then –

“He lives to lie, this Blanco Bumblebee”.

***

“I really know not, what I am going to do with you”, Harry’s Professor sighs as if in exasperation, his pale finger motioning for Harry to follow. It was not far to Professor’s office, as he led with well-nigh soundless steps, as if himself one of the many ghosts of Hogwarts. “Are you okay, Sir?”, Harry wishes to ask, “As in you seem thin and tired.”, - but he knows his teacher would merely shrug worries off.

“I must say, you made a remarkable progress with this special book of yours”, Professor sipped from a hot-steaming tea cup, “Must be more than just my glorious lessons, you keep sacrificed”.     

“Mmmh”, Harry stirred within flavoured water, breathing in the odour of fresh winter pines. “A book is like a window to the soul. Before, I had this strange impression, _he_ would rather live in the past – surrounded by all these Great and Powerful, and _him_ right in their midst. As if he was writing in order to escape somewhere he felt, like he really belonged to. But something happened, to make him refocus on here and now, well, _his_ here and now, as if his dream world got all shaky, and Dumbledore…”

“Life and Lies of Blanco Bumblebee”, let me think… Autumn 1945, not so long after the declared end to the muggle World War, and after Albus Dumbledore’s victory over Gellert Grindlewald, leading to the imprisonment of the latter. Everywhere – in press, in rumours, in law, it was sold as if the Light’s fated victory, rather than a simple statement that Dumbledore's magical prowess, his power and luck somewhat prevailed over such of his opponent’s in this one Duel of largely elemental magic.

No, it must have been a victory of Light over Darkness. A statement of how the Light can and wills to subdue Darkness. An evidence of how Light qualitatively excels over its chosen enemy… He must have…”

“Thomas…” interjects Harry…

“Yes…, this Thomas, he could foresee the repercussions of Britain turning into the Light’s Heavenly Kingdom. How a victory of the “Light” forces a retaliation from the “Dark”, like… a vicious cycle.

There is another reason you sought me out today.”

Overwhelmed by the sudden question, Harry has a difficulty to swallow. Pines tall and lonely, playful wind… “I… I have been thinking about the impossible. If in the end, I actually am incapable of the Dark Ritual, like if I do not have the right thing to sacrifice… For example, there is the ambrosia of Olympian Gods and golden apples that the Northern Gods consume in order to live forever… I mean, are these just fairy tales, or is there an easier way? Something that everyone can try. Even me.”

“Even you?” the long fingers twirled the cup to one side and another, as Professor Quirrell made a spontaneous tealeaves reading. “Easy made immortality? How about a Philosopher’s stone? All you need is the primal matter, large amount of”.

“Of Magic?”

“Several stones have been recorded over the centuries. The only one still there happens to belong to the French alchemist, a Nicholas Flamel. I so happen to have researched the history of its creation, if you wish…”

“If you would…”

Sometimes Harry thinks, that the only reason behind Professor Quirrell’s pitiful classes was the immense scope of the man’s own knowledge, because, because…

“The general consensus regards the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone as the pinnacle of an old man’s lifework. They err. Nicholas Flamel was born in year thirteen thirty near Paris… Can you think of any memorable event to take place in the mid-fourteenth century?”

“Marco Polo reached China?” was a guess in the wild.

“Not quite”, affirms Professor. “Not quite astray. By the mid-fourteenth century the far eastern connection has been sufficiently intensified, that a far less welcome visitor reached old Europe. I am talking about Black Death, the Great Plague of the late medieval world, in a few years only wiping out about the half of European population. You see, when the pest first reached his hometown, Flamel was nineteen.  

Nigredo, the first stage of the alchemical process is such of putrefaction and decomposition. The ingredients are said to be “cooked” to enter a uniform dead blackness. The wizards of medieval Paris were not necessarily as impaired as muggles, as the Great Mortality came. Flamel, however, had it worse, as he was hopelessly in love with Perenelle – the young muggle wife of a Parisian town councillor. People were dropping like flies, everywhere the stench of death and illness. Every family mourning. And in Nicholas, there grew the desire to survive no matter what. This joy to live that can only be born out of the long-lasting fear of an imminent death. There is an Italian Classic, “Il Decamerone”, an ode to life coming from about the same time and place. But for Flamel, it was his flight from death, that granted him the Philosopher’s Stone.

By thirteen fifty Perenelle’s husband was counted among the Plague's victims, and she herself confined to bed with worst possible expectations. In his love and despair, Flamel rediscovers the Ancient Light Ritual. Basically, he took what he saw – villages largely eradicated by pandemic, used his magic to burn into ashes deep black whatever remained – the corpses, the sick, the faint survivors, their livestock and dwellings.

As for the next step – Albedo, Flamel transformed the gathered energy into such of pure shiny magic, to be further condensed into the outcome of a single red stone. In this Ritual, Flamel was in fact no more than a conductor; in order to gather a sufficient amount of energy required, however, several and then more and more villages had to be sacrificed. Like really many villages.

He cures Perenelle, marries her some years after. Perhaps, Flamel initially sought to heal all his landsmen, and that is how he justified his endeavours. He might not have realised, that for the Elixir of Life to be produced, one puts the stone into the water and lets it dissolve until the surrounding solution is exactly the same colour as the Philosopher’s stone. Meaning, there is only a limited amount of the Elixir of Life that can be salvaged from a single stone. The reason that Flamel’s stone is still in existence, is that throughout the centuries he hardly used its powers for anyone different than his wife and himself.

Would you like a more detailed instruction, as to how a Philosopher’s Stone is produced, so you can make your own?”

Professor smiles in a predatory way. Harry hides his head in a sleeve, a silent “No”.

“We could always imagine a hypothetic society, you know, where all that are old, sick, gay and otherwise different, like for example - “Dark”, get sacrificed for the Greater Good, thus everyone else can live forever, or at least live free of Dementors.”

“Dementors?” Harry tastes the new word on his tongue. It is a cold word.

“Lethifolds and Dementors are the two magical creatures most directly associated with human death.  Whereas invisible Lethifolds swallow their victims whole, a Dementor’s touch eats one’s happiness, kiss - eats one’s soul. Needless to say, there is no known way to destroy either, whereas the only effective charm – the elusive Patronus merely prevents an attack from being launched.

Now, Lethifolds luckily favour a warmer climate, but Dementors feel quite perfect with local latitudes and therefore a problem. Like with all exceedingly dangerous magical creatures, our Ministry opted for a creation of a nature protection area, in this case an unplottable island in the middle of the North Sea, where the Dementor population dwells. It is called Azkaban and is a rather well known wizarding prison. This way Dementors are kept occupied with the less “valuable” human beings thrown there to be tortured and very slowly and painfully killed, instead of rummaging freely through whatever house they like next, like the Minister’s own house.

Of course, the Ministry denies they cower to the mere magical creatures’ wishes and instead publicises the terror of Azkaban as their own precious and obedient employees. The necessity to grant Dementors a regular fresh struggling meal, however, led to harsher penalties for lesser offences with the Ministry’s full support. 

Killed someone? Life sentence to Azkaban. Tortured? More so. Dark? On your way! Defied the ministry officials? At least half a year. Performed magic in front of a muggle? Performed underage magic at the wrong time and place? There is nothing for a child like a holiday trip to Azkaban!

He might be a little mad afterwards. But are not we all?”

Professor Quirrell finishes his cup in a gulp.

***

“Dear Sir,

I cannot answer your question. I do not know. It seems absurd to me to assign the sacrifice like “I will give my right leg and an eye”. Even less can I imagine what need Magic could have of my leg.

I am confused. I see now that the Dark Ritual is something that needs to be approached with clarity and caution, yet I feel not a step closer to its preparation. I can only repeat my initial question, as I still do not know how to implement it. Yet I remain willing, and willing for your help.

I hope my pleas reach you.”

Short and to a point, if not a little on demanding side. Harry signs it with the imagery of a lightning bolt, which is the same as the Sun rune – “Sowilo”. Runes were invented as a communication means carved in stone and wood and therefore simple and angular, but Harry is a little confused how the lightning bolt came to represent sun.

With the help of the books Harry makes the discovery the seemingly strange shape originates from the Ancient Egypt, where the Uraeus-snake, a manifestation of the Demiurge’s right eye, which is the sun, glared burning heat from a king’s and a god’s forehead. The lightning bolt is a snake, and a royal sign of protection.  With a mighty snake at his high disposal, with Harry’s name equalling a “home ruler”, Harry is definitely to go down in history!  

Harry halts for a moment, but carefully draws the Tiwaz rune over the envelope. He leaves the letter in the first years’ dormitory, as he ventures into the Common Room, where a Draco Malfoy dwells. As he returns with the boy in tow, the letter has vanished.  

***

Harry is like a love-struck girl, as he waits for T.M.’s answer, yet Harry knows little of love, and all he knows, he has read in the books about. Love for Harry is a social and ideological concept. Love must be something harmonious, Harry thinks, helpful, not lonely, not hungry or wet and cold. Harry thinks in “Not”-terms as he denies the reality of his existence, imagining all he has not – someone for himself, bound to himself, part of himself, to belong, a family. Thomas is the one Harry feels close to, therefore Harry imagines.

Harry lives in an imaginary world.

***

Next day Draco gives Harry a letter. A sheet of paper and then another, where Mr. Malfoy himself expresses his friend’s desire to keep Mr. Malfoy an intermediary for any future exchange. His friend lives particularly secluded, Mr. Malfoy writes, and a fine cultivated paranoia and a well-drafted ward prevents him from receiving any owls. “Pass your letter to me, and it should not be of a problem”.

Harry feels considerably confused, but the letter is of the fine, beloved cursive, calming stray nerves.

“My friend, Harry “, it reads –

“What a pleasure to hear of your ardent interest in my venerable work. From my experience, it takes a considerable effort to teach the youth of today any kind of truth, but here we are! You come to me willingly and ask about the greatest examination there is between the magician and magic, - the Dark Ritual.  

As in every Ritual, you have to offer Magic something that is valuable to you. You do not court Magic by hastily picking flowers and a random box of chocolate at the local vendor, or maybe jewellery if you feel especially bounteous.

It must be something out of your own very special treasure box. Something bathed in laughter and tears, something you would rather keep. It can be animated and unanimated objects, as long as _for you_ they feel alive and conscious. Nature religions have seen a presence in every tree and a stone, in a society of abundance there are few things important. If you have nothing, every single possession becomes important and alive by your feelings for it. If you have everything, maybe a wand, and a broom and few other things hold a significance still. Magic is a fastidious Lady. Woo her with well-thought presents!

That is less important for now. Offering is but the second step. The first is to establish a contact with Magic. You proceed as follows…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Life and Lies of Blanco Bumblebee" after F. Nietzsche's "David Strauss: The Confessor and the Writer" (The first Untimely Meditation). Probably more to come here. 
> 
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	12. Control

As it was becoming a habit, Harry shuffled through his collection of Chocolate Frog Cards, consisting of one Merlin with Lady, the Hogwarts Four, Herpo the Foul, and as of newest an Albus Dumbledore, whom Harry favours to keep face down. They were all official cards and made after the individuals, T.M. wrote about.

“Herpo the Foul”, the card read, “was an Ancient Greek wizard and the first known creator of the Basilisk.” According to T.M., Herpo was indeed a grumpy, down to earth man, whose only lasting companion consisted of the mentioned giant snake, he graciously named “Human”. It may be because of Herpo’s highly inauspicious attitude, however, that Herpo succeeded with a number of inventions, which remain questioned even hundreds of years thereafter. T.M. reports that once asked about this venerable wizard, an Albus Dumbledore stated the following –

_“If a wizard thinks that this world better not be, then certainly it is the thinking he should rather abstain from. He notices not, that by declaring the world a “bad” world, he declares his own thinking, which is a part of this world, a bad thinking. But if his thinking is a bad thinking, then the world is on the contrary - a good world. A wizard should look with hope to the future, as otherwise he denies his own existence”._

„Of course,“ laughs T.M. “What a twinkle-toed commentary! An optimistic man as Albus Dumbledore is, he does not think it necessary to even take an opinion he regards a “sick and unpleasant” one into consideration. He rather discards it, light-heartedly, as if it were nothing at all”.

As if it is a good world!

***

Every magical child collects Chocolate Frog Cards featuring the faces of most famous wizards. Harry receives his first, this Albus Dumbledore, during his train ride to Hogwarts. Ron has Morgana, his seventh, trades her for a barely touched bag of the Bertie Bott’s Beans of Every Flavour, because such are literally of every flavour and Harry is not the bravest one.

Initially, Harry’s wish is to assign faces to names. Then he puts names to piles, grouping wizards after opinions they might have expressed on an issue, and on abilities known. The visual approach at categorisation helps to sort through T.M.’s works; with Harry growing accustomed to play solitaire, he laments the limited number of wizards universally recognised. Because the list of successful Dark Ritual practitioners seems incomplete without a Lily Evans; pureblood supremacy advocate both a Salazar Slytherin and a Draco Malfoy.

Harry dunks quill in ink and draws faces. Cuts the paper as to resemble the shape of a Famous Wizard Card. Black on white, flawed, Harry eternises his significant others. One time Harry’s cards gain attention. “Blimey!” Ron exclaims awe-stricken, “That’s me, me on a Chocolate Frog Card!”

Draco holds his nose slightly higher, Hermione is touched – “That is like keeping a photo album with pictures of all your friends always with you”.

“Do you think it is going to happen? Me, on a Chocolate Frog Card?” wonders Ron.

Because it is black on white, ink on paper in shaky squiggles, idea not true.

“We make it real!”, and like fire desire spreads, envelops Cosmos. The group works on a super ultra rare limited edition card series, picturing themselves. The first research project and already a challenge. Less difficult to copy design, but with the faces they struggle, because faces move.

Wizarding photographs move because of the specific potion used for their development, tying the same few moments to a never-ending loop, not unlike a muggle movie recording. Neither are the cards joined by a simple spell like the Prothean charm, as such merely makes the change done to one object appear upon all objects connected to it.  The pictures from the Chocolate Frog Cards function instead as if magical paintings, with individual wizards winking at the amazed spectators and leaving their frames at will –

“Well, you can't expect him to hang around all day,” explained Ron about one Albus Dumbledore vanishing from his frame back on the Hogwarts Express. “He will be back”.

He was back.

Delving deeper, Harry and his friends learn that a magical portrait creates a self-conscious reflection of the depicted person. Painting a second picture of the same person does not create a new manifestation, it rather provides a new space the already existing portrayal can further appear inside of. Additionally, if painted against a corresponding background, that is if the rooms put into different frames appear to be identical, they are considered the same room. An Albus Dumbledore can appear in as many Chocolate Frog Cards at once, as he desires, since in all Albus Dumbledore cards the old wizard stands against the same starlit sky. Then again, if there are other portraits of the Headmaster, for example in his office, the Dumbledore manifestation has to decide if he rather stays in the office or visits the card game.

Your usual painting, as them are hundreds adorning the Hogwarts walls, has the ability to speak. The reason, Harry keeps his Albus Dumbledore card face down, follows the gelid realisation, the card Dumbledore is in the perfect position to spy on every magical child and every adult holding him in their hands. There is no guarantee, whether or not the card Dumbledore communicates seen details to his real-life version.

At least the other cards Harry keeps are of the people long dead, thus probably less interested in the here and now.

There is an official Harry Potter Chocolate Frog Card with Harry looking close to his current age. Harry never posed for the honour. Harry has no idea of the person, who painted him. Moreover, has this artist any idea of Harry?

The second law behind the magical paintings states that it is the artist’s impression of the person painted that is manifested. It is the reflection through the eyes of the beholder and not a true embodiment, unless the painter and the painted coincide. 

Harry’s Famous Wizard Cards alter ego must be a superficial reflection, as they do not know Harry.  In case of a second deeper level depiction, a personality update is expected. Harry wonders if for example this scowling old Herpo is a later day artistic rendition, based on not own memories, or a true Herpo, that miraculously survived for many, great many years.

All paintings are interconnected. If Cosmos succeeds, the club members hope to be able of communication with each other through their pictures. Draco voiced his desire for a professional painting kit to be received at Yule. It consists of a camera to shoot the painting reference. Of painting supplies with an added high-resolution compulsion charm as to allow the aspiring artist to perfectly reproduce the picture from the reference. Low-level compulsion charms are a well-known wizarding alternative to instructional sets like the “colour by numbers” muggles buy their children.  Here, the child’s hand is magically guided as to form a Mimbulus Mimbletonia or a pair of pixies. Basic sets employ few colours, care for little detail. Their educational value is deemed high, as the child generally grows accustomed to brush and paints.  The professional set, as the one Draco relays to be ordered, not only vouches for a best possible result, it allows to set a mood, to add subtle personality features, to choose a painting style. It enables the amateurs and children they are to imprint themselves, as if the second “I”. It costs a fortune, but Draco is a Malfoy. Then again, a good painter doubles a psychologist. You pay him for artistic integrity, for good conversation. For seeing parts of yourself, deep, deep in your soulful eyes, you have yet to know. “I am seeing my painter tonight,” as a wizarding Lady says.

The last of the painting kit is a book with instruction of how to copy a painting, how to keep it safe. How to enable an audible articulation, and how to turn it off. If using the cards as a communication device, Harry’s friends wish to rather include writing supplies to the rooms’ background, as it shall draw less attention. Furthermore, the speech enchantment seems complicated, possibly at NEWT levels.

Admittedly, Harry has hopes. Harry drew cards of Lily Evans, Professors Snape and Quirrell, and one of T.M. As Harry knows not of T.M.’s appearance, he hides him in a long cloak in the darkest night. But no matter the appearance, if Harry makes a second magical version, if there is another authentic painting of Thomas Myrddin, the paintings will be interconnected, with Harry’s version gaining more of Thomas’ true personality and mannerisms, as there can only be one Thomas.

An even more daring thought lives in Harry. What if once Harry knows the enchantments, has the supplies, what if Harry paints a portrait of T.M. without actually painting T.M.

What if Harry creates a new room for an already existing version of Thomas? Could Harry imprint a background with an essence of Thomas, thus it becomes Thomas’ space, and in consequence enabling Thomas to visit Harry….?!

Can Harry summon his Thomas?

***

There is about a month till after the winter holidays. Harry sits in the Slytherin Dorm Room, lays out cards.  Harry just finished “The Life and Lies of Blanco Bumblebee” - of thinly veiled Albus Dumbledore; he has to reconsider. He moves his T.M. card, ink on paper, dark figure against the dark background, almost faded to another place, faded elsewhere, the “Joker”, as Harry lovingly calls him… Harry moves him over an invisible line.

Before, Harry thought T.M. a scholar, a silent observer researching powerful and forgotten magic, for he desires to know.

Now, Harry feels T.M. a practitioner, him - a master wielding the old obscure lore, making it resurface in the current timeline, it terribly beautiful.

***

“Life and Lies” is a book on Albus Dumbledore, a simple teacher defeating the iniquitous Lord Grindelwald, and people and newspapers alike all begged for a word from their saviour. T.M. evaluates printed interviews and to a lesser amount the hearsay, when what in T.M.’s opinion is a man but sufficiently accomplished to educate others in Transfiguration, a well-enough scholar to discover some uses of Dragon Blood, and do a little of Alchemy…, he suddenly steps out of his dusty corner and seeks to grant the general guidance.    

And how T.M. abhors this guidance. This essay, it is to sincerely decline that he, Thomas, is in any way a part of Dumbledore’s “We”, or how the old man words _– “We, not merely scholars and teachers, we the ministry workers and hit-wizards, we healers and salesmen, and landholders, we – the good people, we are not few but a many thousands of us. We seek to sustain the best in the human, and it is how we in the past years fought against the Great Evil and prevailed over it. We, the representatives of a wizarding culture of tolerance, and of love and goodness, we that are the Light of this word, we follow the path of all humans with a soul and mind, imagination and good humour, and we prevail. We live, and we live happily”._

T.M. is not happy. T.M. advocates a genuine wizarding culture, one that is more than a patched up carpet of striking differences and fancy contradictions, Dumbledore all so happily oversees. One that goes back to the true origins of magic and of wizarding kind, one that is unique to the magical creatures we are. A wizarding culture as a lustrous ideal, - can be sought after, yet hardly found, an idea of truth.

The difference between T.M. and Albus Dumbledore is that T.M. _is_ a seeker, a true genius, one destined to fail, yet never to overcome his blazing drive to continue on his path to eternity. Albus Dumbledore pretends to be a genius, this slightly mad old wise man, man with answers. Man like a thousand of men, who know Merlin in the exclamation of his name only - as a sign of astonished happiness; in sticking a badge with his name on the renowned shoulder.  Man like thousands of men, who never dream of elusive depths, of untrodden paths, and of cave of wonder after an ocean of blood...

_“Man, who is the first to pose as the greatest wizard of our time, yet scared of the true greatness, he gives his best to ban anything “sick and not sane”, bans entire branches of magic, bans books, dastardly opposing the Freedom of Research and the Freedom of Art.  Opposes Freedom!_

_Opposes dreams, as wide as the starlit sky! Opposes passion, as scorching as the primeval chaos! And pain, encompassing this starved soul. These visions of great, great, Greater, Deeper, Higher, Everything, but not shallow!_

_Opposes… insanity._

_But then, this man believes he has all the answers!_

_He hates this restless spirit, hates it because it searches, because to agree it declines, that you, Dumbledore’s you, have found whatever it seeks. “Search no more!”, such is this Dumbledore’s solution. A happiness of constrictive contentment, this is his happiness!_

_Betimes he admits a flaw, how we love his flaws, especially since they are such flaws that not him, he says, the other Great Minds committed. But he, he himself stands here, smiling and confident, condemning and bestowing blessings, and with his beard pleasantly swinging – “I must confess, my dear friends, I see no one, continuously right, but me”._

_This Albus Dumbledore, who presses his “modern beliefs”, beliefs not even knowledge, and requests everyone to share his “train to a lightly gathered up future”. And those, who oppose this train? Them Dumbledore calls immature – “Ah, the foolishness of youth! Not everyone is sufficiently ripe to recognise our beauty, our health and our order”. “_

***

T.M. feels himself as one of the few to bear the features of a searching, creative genius to grasp at the hem of the true magical culture. He is not modest, nor does he value modesty. T.M. has to be special, and if asked, this man certainly declares, he is to become the Greatest Sorcerer of All Time.

All judgement aside, T.M.’s more practical approach, albeit opposing Harry’s previous impression, it implies that this man knows exactly what he speaks about. His instructions on the Dark Ritual seem reliable, because self-experienced. T.M. is so much more wonderful, than Harry originally assumed. Harry trusts in T.M.’s expertise, as he throws the sticking and silencing charms at his bed curtains. With uncle Vernon’s old sock in hand, he begins meditation.

***

His mind is like a path with many doors, like a stream, and he wades the water. Mist, morning mist, winter mist, wet and grey and tap-tap, Harry’s feet, ice water. Not enough friction, Harry’s feet slide down the great, great lake, as if an iron bullet approaching a lodestone.  In the middle, there is a freeze hole, and Harry falls down the pit, he drowns in heavy water. As if through a layer of ice, Harry watches a scene.

There is a room in a house, man, woman, child, - “Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off —”, shift, stairs, little boy in the woman’s arms, bright red hair, a figure cloaked – “Stand aside, you silly girl... stand aside, now...” – “Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!”, she cries, “Not Harry!” Flash of green and another, crumbling, crumbling, Harry drowns.

***

Same house, living room. Man wears glasses, untameable hair…, a burning fireplace. Woman’s eyes are green, she is pale, beautiful and pale.

“She knows not what the curse may be, and so she weaveth steadily, and little other care hath she, the Lady of Shallot…”, woman sings, little boy listens. And plays with her burning hair, this laughing little boy.

They run upstairs,  woman and boy, she holds him close, closer, she shakes, but little boy knows no evil, he is silent, his eyes are green, and once the woman screams – “Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead—”, he knows no evil.

“Stand aside. Stand aside, girl!”, long, long fingers, white wand as if a finger itself, green beam. 

And wall to pieces, and Harry drowns.

***

He finds himself warm, as heat escapes the fireplace and curls itself around his tall body. He sits in a chair, makes sparks of light to flee his wand, as to catch his little boy’s attention. He likes this house. It was, evidentially, the spur of the moment choice, as their life was in danger, yet they could not stay at the old Potter place, nor continue to burden Sirius, Weasleys and all of the other good people having accommodated them in the past. When Albus suggested a new way to keep them hidden, they bought this house, Lily was so happy.

Lily, his lovely wife, his lovely son, and lovely home… all threatened by a sick bastard, murdering innocent people.

It would be a better world without dark, slimy, treacherous gits, and James does not trust Snape one bit, even despite Albus’ repeated assurances…

And Sirius, Sirius comes from a pretty dark family too, but Sirius is James’ best mate and adopted brother, and is not such a proof that it is a choice to defy the evil – the evil in your veins. And the proof, they are nothing more, but the murdering bastards about to ruin James’ lovely life.

Last week, they got the Prewett twins, of course the boys fought like heroes, but two against five and it was a slaughter, slaughter, slaughtered. They were perfectly good men, as good men are.

Lily sits with Harry on the couch. Lily sings Harry a song. Lily… The beautiful, clever, kind, precious Lily…

Lily stops mid-strophe.

Lily smiles, somehow both sad and happy.

Lily should not be sad. James wants to dispose of them all, the bastards. James wants to return to those times, when it was just pranking Snivellus and charming Lily. Mad run in the moonlight with his dear friends. Flying with Prongslet high above the fir tree. Prongslet makes all these wonderful little sounds whenever on broom, and dear Lily screams “James Charlus Potter, don’t you dare to drop my son!” and clutches her wand tightly. Quidditch, Lily! We are throwing this hideous green and red plastic ball – all the wrong shades, your sister Petunia brought for little Harry’s first birthday, and Harry giggles and catches the ball mid-air, afore it falls right through his small chubby hands…

A blast to the house door and James freezes and feels so hot all over, with rage. This murdering bastard…

Destroying everything…

Which James holds dear…

Never, Never.

Never.

“Lily, take Harry and go! It’s him! Go! Run! I’ll hold him off!”

Never. That cannot be.

A sick murderer.

In My Home.

Green Light.

***

He finds himself warm, as he accompanies the girl, Lily is her name, she is a girl of twenty-one. She is a witch.

Since she awoke this morning, Lily knew that Magic loves her today. Speedily she runs out and in the garden and wills – not bothering with either wand or incantation, she wills the roses grow. She is excited. It is several months ago, that she first thought of this spell. The roses rise, curl their stems around each other, around house, their thorns glisten white and petals red. Soon Lily’s house is hidden within an enchanted forest, as if from the muggle movie Lily and Tuny watched as children.

“They won’t hinder you from coming, my Prince”.

And just so, brambles and thorns dissolve, letting the morning sun through.

***

She sits in a big crème armchair, her hand repeating the same motion – up, down, up down, combing knots out of red gold. She hums quietly a little song, hand moving up down, solemnly. She reaches out for her jewel case, should she wear her wedding necklace of big round pearls; the ring Severus got her for her thirteenth birthday with a cheap glittery stone – as Severus' father drank so much and they were poor to begin with and going to the boarding school and…

“How silly of me”, she stands from the dressing table, and her eyes catch the person in the mirror. How silly of her, but for the first time this thought emerges, and grows and roars its head and sings, sings in the blowing wind - “I am going to die”.

She runs out to the kitchen, browses shelves, anything, anything to fix her eyes upon, - Dorea’s recipe book. Harry, Harry loves grandmother’s cheesecake. She turns the music on, there is the new “Weird Sisters” song, Lily has yet to hear…

***

_“Out flew the web and floated wide- the mirror crack'd from side to side;_

_"The curse is come upon me," cried the Lady of Shalott.”_

_***_

Her boy watches her with glistening big eyes, as if he understands, – I am going to die.

She feels the wards ripple.  Lily has always been the one magically stronger, she reads much, much more, and it was her to protect this little domicile from all harm. Layer on layer, new and old and tricky and ancient and forgotten, she feels the first touch. Soft, wondering, as if admiring Lily’s work, and damn, she is proud of it; then he thrusts.

Hard and powerful and Lily can’t help the gasp from her lips, as he thrusts again, his magic – her wards, hard and fast and violating, breaking in, layer for layer, her powerful wards stretched, torn apart with his magic, his wild pulsating magic, and gods, gods…

“… Harry… and run…”

What? There is this voice… What? James? What is happening… James? She stands upon shaking legs, eyes focus… Harry… Harry… She moves, stumbling legs, and she knows not, knows not, why it is, she is crying…

You are going to die…

_Good-bye, James._

***

They are in the small nursery painted in soft blue. Dark blue butterflies live in the walls, Lily charmed them herself, as she did with the green dragon, and the dancing rabbit, this overly loud elephant, squishing beneath her slipper, and…

I am going to die.

For a moment Lily wishes to tear down, what there is still left of her wards - there is a reason she is the strongest witch of her generation, to apparate little Harry away, somewhere away, as her husband’s body falls to the floor and…

“Harry, love. No worries, love. You are going to live all of your mother’s dreams”. I am going to die.

Soft steps as if he not quite touches the floor, and the stairs, and…  She stands with her child in arm, stands steadfast, but runs, runs in her mind. He is cloaked, and Lily is left to wonder what form he assumed tonight. She knows, he wears a high-level glamour, because whenever he is seen in public, it is always modified slightly, as if the Dark Lord playing “Spot the Differences”. Lily imagines, this man stills afore a mirror whenever there comes a raid and thinks – “What face to adorn me tonight?”

She giggles, but it is a far cry from laughter and – I am going to die, she holds her boy closer, her precious boy, feeling his little heartbeat, as if a bird, and taking a sniff of his hair, ashwinder, calm, calm down, Lily. I am going to die. I am going to die.

Her magic has coiled together, back in the hiding, as if a lion – a snake – before a jump.

I am going to die.

Her legs are freezing, there is a little boy in her arms, this little boy, her bright wonder, her child… Harry, his name is Harry. Her Harry… I am going to die.

She breaths hard and fast, there is warmth in her arms and spots in her eyes, blurry spots, and then he speaks in an icy high voice – fake, fake, fake – so obviously fake, and it washes all over Lily and she remembers. Right, right – I love you Harry. _Mama loves you, Harry_ …

It is all for show, a play-act. The camera runs.

Lily knows her lines.

Harry falls more.

***

A wonderful day.

Wonderful day. Riding broom with Dada, and Mama’s best cheesecake and now Mama and this guy fight!

It is almost as great a battle, as when uncle Siri and Dada send all this colourful light flying at each other and then Uncle Siri is caught by the beam and falls down and twitches on the ground and goes all really still. And Mama sighs from her book. And Uncle Siri suddenly cries an “arf” and turns a dog, big and black and with a really wet nose. And he comes and licks Harry’s fingers, and Dada helps Harry onto Uncle Siri’s back, and holds him and they make rounds in the garden, and Uncle Siri jumps really high. So high. And Harry laughs hard, so hard, and Dada and Uncle Siri laugh and even Mama hides a smile behind her book.

And now, Mama finally has someone to play with too, with colourful lights and all, though Harry is not sure if he likes this big guy in big cloak. He is fun, but a little scary, this guy. Mama is on the floor, anyway, so now, now… Harry waits with a bated breath, Uncle Siri is a dog, and Dada a stag, can Mama be an animal too?

Yes! Mama rises up, shimmering beautifully, she smiles at Harry…

***

“Have you heard? The Potters? You-Know-Who?”

“You can’t mean it, really?”

“The rumours are?”

“He is gone? You-Know-Who is gone?!”

“I have it from the assured source,” insists Mundungus Fletcher. “You-Know-Who came after Potters, killed them – God bless their souls, tried to kill little Harry too…”

“But the curse fired back, the Killing Curse, and got at You-Know-Who himself”, cuts in a girl with a ponytail, Emmeline Vance, as she orders a drink.

“You don’t say. A killing curse! Backfired!”, echoes Madam Rosmerta of “The Three Broomsticks”.

“Yes, that is what I am trying to say,” Dedalus Diggle from the Order takes a sip of the firewhiskey. “You-Know-Who is gone. Defeated by Harry Potter”.

“A child. How old is he?”

“I don’t know?! Maybe, two?”

“Two years old child!”

“He is really gone?!”

“More butterbeer, Rosmerta! This calls for a celebration!”

“Where is the music?”

“Butterbeer!”

“You-Know-Who is gone!”

“Gone!”

“Really gone!”

Raise the glasses! It is round tables, red fireplace, play of candles in glass and faces, and a hopeful, a terribly hopeful and a hopefully loud -

“To Harry Potter!”

***

Harry walks a dark street along with a man with dark hair. It is a lovely dark hair in fashionable curls. The man wears fashionable clothes along with a frown. In his left hand, the man carries a letter. It is a letter from the man’s mother, Harry learns, from Walburga.

They had exchanged letters for quite a while. The letters are always most inspirational in whatever insults Sirius throws at these blasted Death Eaters.

It is not the first letter, but every single one demands angrily, that he, Sirius, blasts this Gryffindorish stupidity out of his stubborn black head and resumes his duties as the heir to an Ancient and Noble House.

Right!

Damn hag. What does she know?! That an eleven year old Sirius showed the courage on insisting “Not Slytherin” despite being a Black, it alone sufficiently qualified Sirius for the House of Red and Gold. Even the bad, bad cousin Andy was a brave little Slytherin.

“Nature versus Nurture” as Lily would say, “Have you rebelled against the Slytherin in your blood or your upbringing? “

Lily suggests that maybe, just maybe Sirius is very much like his mother, from whom he inherits the famous Black temper. Gryffindor versus Slytherin - battles that are either bold or subtle, yet battles. If there is anything to say of a true Black, he is always the dominant one. He likes to have his own head, stubborn, ridiculously stubborn, gets his way.

Walburga dotes on little Regulus, because of Regulus’ subtlety and finesse. He is the quintessential Slytherin, says Lily – “If you wish Voldemort dead, you demand for a fair duel, and woe betide, he accepts.” Right! She raises her hand to stop Sirius’ flustered backtalk. “If your brother decides to go against the Dark Lord… “

“And hell freezes!”

“Your brother would do it in such a way, that he succeeds as much as one can succeed – with no one the wiser.

From your stories and my observation, there are two kinds of Black temper. We have you running over to the Light Side, and then there is your mother, and your cousin Andromeda escaping to the muggles, and your cousin Bellatrix mingling with the Death Eaters. And then, there is your brother Regulus. And aunt Dorea and your cousin Narcissa, who make their own thing all the same, in finding a suitable husband and a rich and a pureblood heir.”

“Hold on, Lily. How is being a Malfoy any different from being a Black?”

“Ah, but that is a matter of style. With the Black family, it is like they are still living in the Middle Ages. However, Malfoys act as if the Renaissance _mecenates_ , whereas Potters are clearly modern. So, it is most certainly a choice“.

“Yeah, and Death Eaters are what? Postmodern?”

“Of course”. They laughed.

“So you see, while being with Regulus, your mother finds herself in this lovely, relaxing atmosphere, and it seems easier to her to become what she wants to be, how she wants to be. It is the same with your father Orion, who is a gentleman too.

With you, ah, I bet she sees herself in you and just as she daily struggles with being this “Black”, she pushes you, and when you rebel, she pushes more. It is a simple matter of what you are against what you ought to be…”

“You speak as if out of experience, Lily”.

Lily laughs.   

***

Regulus… pretty, soft-spoken and perfect Regulus, Walburga’s precious child, dead…

Lily, in her beyond the age wisdom, she is an influence on James, who matures in order to win the girl; and on Sirius himself, who is a honorary Potter. Potters, everything is better with Potters…

Lily calls it a “temper”, but Sirius knows it is the Black insanity, which runs in his veins. That is why Sirius is not appropriate as the Secret Keeper.

Walburga, if Walburga deigned to the spirit of the Black rebellion, how would Sirius’ mother be?

She was outrageously beautiful in her youth, and a splitting image of the great-aunt Isla, - what with all the Black intermarriage. Great aunt Isla, who did the honours to the family name by marrying a muggle. Bob – Robert Hitchens, as the family archives say. It is a lie.

Bob Hitchens was an aspiring muggle painter, not exactly talented, but well off as a son to a squire. He meets the then seventeen years old Isla on her spring break from Hogwarts. She is in her sixth year and enjoys the intricate muggle jewellery. It is next to the jewellery shop, where Bob meets Isla, she sits him for a picture. He invites her to the muggle opera in hopes for a blissful night. Bob Hitchens is merely the first in the string of men to amuse Isla. He lasts exactly till intermission. The night Isla spends with an English Earl. The night thereafter with a prince from the continent, who then invites Isla overseas. She dumps him a few weeks later.

Later, as her brother and the head of the Black family, as Phineas Nigellus confronts Isla, she laughs – “Why to rely on a stick of wood if look at me! Look at this hair, these lips, these eyes, skin, voice, mind… All about me, this is all magic! And I, I, instead of charming only a few thousands of wizards, I am enchanting millions. I am the dream of every, every man and a woman. I am the most famous Black ever.”  

She has two passions, Isla, this femme fatale from the fin de siècle - the theatre and men. The men, of whom she says, she has slept with a thousand. She likes to sacrifice their male pride, their shattering hearts to the altar of her velvet shoes. She sleeps with men, adoring men, and she lives of their riches, but a Black, she views them below her half-lidded eyes. It is her choice and her act and her body. They are… men. She is the star.

She is the Star, there are countless of paintings and photographs, articles and reviews and the silent movies depicting Isla. As she dies, breaking her spine in a stage accident. As the next year Walburga is born, there are the hushed jokes, how little Walburga is “La divine Isla” reincarnated. She certainly looks the part.

Lily would say, Sirius’ mother tried too hard to rebel against becoming a second Isla, - always playing a Lady, when not being a Lady. And with time, she became this hating and self-hating and bitter woman, crying over her exemplary dead son…

Maybe… he should speak with the old hag, make amends, inherit... Would it not be… hilarious, if the Bla Bla Bla this House of Black chases away the Dark Ages from the inside out!

What a prank!

Yet suddenly, Sirius’ forearm burns. In the place, Sirius wears his wristband. James transfigured the beads after the funny shapes from a muggle magazine, and Lily charmed it together, and waterproof and never to dirty and break… But now, it falls apart.

Lily and James both added one drop of blood, because it is Sirius’ right to know, whenever his best friends are hurt, so he can help his friends. But the wristlet, it crumbles to dust.

***

“That ain't true!

Lily and James dead, ain't true!”

Tears drop down the giant man’s cheeks, wetting his long, cluttered hair. It has something heart wrenching to watch such a big and rough looking man cry. Harry makes himself really small in what he recognises must be the Headmaster Dumbledore’s office corner. There are several of strange looking devices in the Headmaster’s office, that are blinking madly and going from side to side.  Hagrid was called in just now, and was told the news.

“Their death was not in vain. Lily and James Potter shall be known as heroes, who sacrificed themselves to safe thousands more. And they live on in their son, Harry”.

“Little Harry, all alone now…”, there is blazing compassion in Hagrid’s big heart, but Dumbledore reassures – “Harry Potter still has some family. He will live a happy childhood with his muggle aunt and uncle and their son being Harry’s age mate.

That is why I called for you Hagrid. Would you please fetch little Harry for me, to assure that no harm comes to him from Voldemort’s followers. You can bring him there…” 

Hagrid leaves, and then it is just two of them, Dumbledore and a version of Harry.

It happened then, thinks Dumbledore. Can we hope that Voldemort is vanquished? No, that is not how it went. “And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal…” Always a step a time. Such a bother, these prophecies. He will need to keep an eye on little Harry. Lily and James dead. Yes, they were good people.

_Such a pity, they died._

***

Harry finds himself in a bedroom. It is dark wood from the ceiling over furniture to the panelled floor, and it is a dark room hiding a tall, pale woman in nothing but a nightgown. She is beautiful, but she reminds Harry of the pictures of Sirius’ mother Walburga - as she was in her youth and unconditionally adored by Sirius’ father Orion, as Harry saw her in Sirius’ mind. She is a sensual, not innocent Walburga.

That is what happens to him. Harry falls from a mind to mind, further and deeper apart, as it is always the same night, and this woman, she sits tall and dark in the shadows of her bedroom.

Her hand hovers over her forearm, moves on to somewhere over her heart, clenched in a fist, then falls, powerless. The woman sits, as if a doll or a statue.

“Bella, the Dark Mark, the Dark Lord…”

A man, tall, dark-haired, polished, disturbs the silence of the room.

“They all say, Bella, the Potters. That the Dark Lord is…”

“Potters?” the woman spats, but her voice is undeniably shaking.  “That makes no sense. Potters! Why should My Lord go after a mudblood’s child?”

She stands up and paces the room, quickly, she mutters – “Why should My Lord fear a mudblood’s child? That is a lie. What they say is a lie. That cannot be… “

“That cannot be, Rodolphus. They must have it wrong. Not Potters, Longbottoms. The other boy. We must find them Rodolphus. They could not have hurt My Lord. With their meaningless magic, they could not have hurt My Lord. What is going on…

What is going on, Rodolphus?”

“The Dark Mark, Bella. Have you seen it, Bella? It faded. Something must have happened. Something…”

“Nonsense, Rodolphus. We must find them, must find My Lord…” the woman speaks, as she throws on a dress, a beautiful dress, but she obviously does not care about it. She closes her eyes for the moment when her forearm exposed, and Harry sees a snake rising from a mouth of a skull, sees barely.

Harry follows the woman and the man and the man’s brother, – “Her husband”, supplies something from this world around Harry, as they walk from one place to another, looking for the “Longbottoms”.

The men keep calm if distraught, but the woman shivers. Through her head doubt races, followed by fear, by denial. “Longbottoms”, she repeats as if a prayer, a prayer for a happily ever after.

Longbottoms are a man and a woman, young too, they call to arms upon sight. They have no chance. Bella is… mad. She twists and dances, and throws curses, as if to vanquish this horrible feeling spreading from her chest and down her stomach and up her mind. She is insane in fury and worry and even her two companions know to keep to the background in fear of a stray spell. “My Lord... Anything, Not My Lord!”, keeps repeating in her head, and she battles her inner demons, as she holds the opposing couple under the Unforgivable.

“Bella, it is enough, Bella. They know nothing! Nothing at all!”, tries to reason with her Rodolphus, as the Longbottoms twitch wildly down her legs, “Bella!”, cries out her husband, she hears not.

She drowns in her misery and her despair, Harry drowns with her.

“Bella, you are crying, Bella!”… She is a prisoner of her own anguish. For this one man. So dear to her. Her Lord.

“Bella, we must go. They know not. The Aurors will arrive from moment to moment. You are crying, Bella…”

She listens not. She throws another Crucio. “Crucio, Crucio”, she only repeats. A broken record. With bleeding lips. With charred heart. She just realised…

Her Lord is gone.

Gone.

Gone...

Harry falls. 

***

Harry falls, but whenever he is, he is followed by their stories. “My Lord!” tears the dark haired woman, tears blood from her heart and others’. “Lily, Oh Lily!” trembles the black-haired man, entangled in the cooling corpse of his never true dream. “To the Boy-Who-Lived”, the cheers everywhere, and dancing. “Pettigrew!” screams the mad man, torn, so torn. Fireworks, fireworks everywhere and music. And Harry screams too – “That is not me! That is not me!”

He runs away from their tragedies and celebration, through the doors, through the doors of his mind and finds himself in a cupboard. Cupboard under the stairs. There are spiders, Lady Jane Grey and Charlotte Lucas, and Melchisedec, and the new one – Lord Chamberlain. Harry calls them names, as to make them a little familiar and less scary. They are his pets, his subjects, as they live in the same cupboard, in the same dark little space and are just as hungry…

“Where do you think, you are going, boy?”

Uncle Vernon stops Harry a metre from the door handle. Harry looks at his feet in his too big shoes, Dudley’s old shoes, as it always is, better to be honest –

“The Library… My teacher, she… You know, how bad I am with school.” – a lie. “She assigned me additional reading,” – a lie. “So I can become as good as Dudley is”, - a lie. “And you know, how expensive those books are…” – A lie, lie,  lie.

“You, boy, shall never be as good as my Dudley”, his Uncle nods satisfied and steps from the door.

A Lie.

“Go…”

Go.

***

He finds himself on his bed, and instructs himself like so many times before, as he never learns, it seems that he never learns – breath. Calm down. Breath. Breath.   

That is not Me!

What have you learnt? Must take the logical approach. What have you learnt?

Harry was… targeted.

Because of… “My Lord!” - “Lily!” - “Pettigrew!” - “The Boy-Who-Lived”…

Green Light…

A Prophecy. There was a prophecy. “Mark him as his equal…” That is the only line. There must be more.  Dumbledore knows…

What is going on? What is going on?

Calm down, Harry. The Ritual. It must have gone wrong. The Ritual. What has gone wrong? Think. Think, Harry.

There is no reason to panic. You are safe. The Ritual. Thomas. Thomas must know. Trust Thomas. Take the parchment. Write. Write nicely…

“Dear Thomas,

I am… seeing my parents die. Over and over. I have… long accepted their death. It is a fact, their death. They are dead. There is nothing I could do to change a thing. Therefore, it is only logical to accept that they are dead.

I do not remember my parents. Whatever flashes I see, they do not make me closer to my parents, as they really are dead. Why would Magic show me my parents’ death over and over? What reason could there be? I am really fine with my parents’ death. They are dead. I am fine. It makes no sense. Yet I cannot think of any way I disregarded your instruction.

Your friend,

Harry”.

He smears the ink somewhat, but that is fine. Uncle Vernon’s old sock lies next to him. This sock. It is an integral part of the only birthday present Harry received from his relatives prior to knowing about magic. It is meaningful.

It is not important what Harry saw. Harry must have done something wrong somehow. The Ritual...

“Harry, Harry… Are you okay? Harry?” Draco unspells the bed curtains, looks at Harry and…

“Pass this to your father, please” Harry gives Draco the letter. Harry smiles.

The smile never reaches his eyes. 

***

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The Life and Lies of Blanco Bumblebee" as a version of Nietzsche's "David Strauss: The Confessor and the Writer" (The first Untimely Meditation). The ballad "The Lady of Shalott" was written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The lore on magical portraits is my conclusions to canon information.
> 
> ***  
> This story is a lot on my mind, therefore I have a tendency to draw an illustration here and now. 
> 
> This is ["His Evilness" and "His Goodness"](http://merdesmiroirs.tumblr.com/post/43231780964) as after the Ch. 11.
> 
> For the 12th chapter I have a version of Harry's ink on paper cards of his friends - [Set I](http://merdesmiroirs.tumblr.com/post/43890049415)  
> The second set of four including Professors Snape and Quirrell, Lily and T.M. is still in work. 
> 
> More so the ["Ladies of Black"](http://merdesmiroirs.tumblr.com/post/44096675084) with from back to front a half-lying femme fatale Isla (can you guess the real-life reference?), a kneeling Bella and her pretty and innocent self - a smiling Walburga. 
> 
> (I have further updated the notes section in the very beginning, as well as set the rating to "M" - mature. It will certainly take quite a while, but I can imagine there to be some intimacy, among other things.)
> 
> Till the next time!


	13. Need

The next morning, a Monday, the inhabitants to the Slytherin first year dorm collectively overslept.  Left with merely thirty-five minutes until the daily meet and greet session in the Great Hall, Draco Malfoy still spends seventeen point five minutes fixing his hair. Gregory, Vincent and Theo required on average two and a half minutes each on their headdresses. Harry needs eight minutes, not because of his remarkable hair length, but the tendency to stare off into space, consisting of a green muddy water and occasional silver fishes of the preeminent Black Lake.

In the Great Hall, there are thirteen toasts on a plate, fifteen sausages and only nine buns. There are thirty percent more of Slytherin than Gryffindor students currently at breakfast, despite the Gryffindor house having ten percent more people on average. A Slytherin student further spends two hundred and fifty percent more time actively eating his breakfast in comparison to a Gryffindor student, Harry notes, even though the amount he eats makes only about eighty-five percent of the food vanishing in a Gryffindor throat.        

In class, Neville almost makes five crucial, eight intermediate and fifteen slight mistakes whilst preparing the ingredients. Harry stirs eleven times clockwise and only three times counter-clockwise in the first hour of double Potions. In the second hour, Harry increases his movement by about sixty and three hundred and twenty percents respectively. Professor Snape survives zero cauldron explosions, vanishes five abominably brewed potions and bestows fifteen points to Slytherin, five points for each perfect brew. Gregory Goyle, Theodore Nott and Pansy Parkinson do not receive points, neither does Harry. How many potions pass from the Gryffindor house if Pansy Parkinson collaborates with Parvati Patil, and Harry Potter gains an “Acceptable”?

There is a fifteen minutes break before double Defence. Four and a half corridors connecting the Potions classroom to the Slytherin dormitory and a two words password. Only one letter currently waiting on Harry’s pillow.

***

“What do you think of time?

On my travels, be it to the dawn of the human era, be it across the continents, I have touched not only a variety of cultures, a variety of times… The ideas - what the time is, they too differed. The main distinction I wish to speak about – Is time a line or a circle?

“A circle”, speak ancient myths. That nature dies and is reborn on Winter Solstice, when the night is the longest, the cycle of the year. With the birth and the death of a god-king a cycle comes, the Ancient Egyptians believed, with the span of a human’s life. Sixty years on average, twelve animal patrons and five elements, esteemed the Chinese sages. “It is the same stage and script, only actors change”, as a wise man said, once asked about time. Time goes in circles, what is to come, it is to pass, drops in the ocean, time never-ending.

“A line”, says Christian religion, with its profound influence upon the occidental cultures. A line from the creation of men and until the Apocalypse. Time measured in the years of God, a long time and finite. “A doomed time”, say witnesses from the Dark Age, in both hope and fear. “Time of Enlightenment”, declares the muggle of the modern era. From woods and caves, we came into cities as high as sky, cities of plastic and glass, together held by technology. Mistrusting their chosen and flawed God, misinterpreting their chosen, narcissistic Philosophers, they stick to the line, the line to the self-made Paradise. The line of “Progress”, and to be exact - of the “economic growth”, as it dictates the modern day muggle culture.

Economic growth is any increase in the amount of goods produced by an economy - be it a local craftsman or a country, compared to any previous point in time. That is, every single period of time a larger amount of goods should be produced and sold than ever before, otherwise the economy cannot grow.

The more goods of the same type there are on the market, the larger a consumer’s choice and less the price he is to pay for the good, as sellers vie for the customers. Given, someone already owns this pair of shoes, convenient as they are, he might decide to buy the same pair of shoes a second time in case the first pair breaks, assumed he has spare money or the shoes get dangerously cheap.

Unless they are different shoes, thinks the economy, adding an inch to the heels and a bow.

In its race against inflation, that is the fall of prices, if there are too many goods. But it is an economy’s desire to produce and sell too many goods, and the economy enlists progress. A change of fashion, and new clothes can be sold, disregarding the full wardrobes. A faster car is always a better choice, despite the national speed limits. Our state has to have the more potent bombs than the opponent state, albeit a disaster occurs if even a single of less promising nuclear weapons activates.

The principle of economic growth requires, that the consumer exchanges his old goods for the new goods of the same category as soon as he can, as the consumer has to always want the new goods. It asks not if the customer _needs_ the new goods, for such he already has may be fully functional still. One solution of course is to produce bad quality goods, lasting only for a short period of time, thus they have to be exchanged. It helps that your average consumer lacks a sufficient amount of money to regularly invest in high quality products. The other popular solution is to equate good but by comparison old things with waste. In both cases, we have a devaluation of well, things.

Lots of waste.

And a waste of resources, which by the by are finite.

In comparison, a magical artisan like Olivander would be a nightmare of every muggle economist. Given, Olivander sells wands, which ideally are _supposed_ to hold for a wizard’s entire life from the age of eleven on. And blasphemy! Olivander crafts every single wand to the best of his ability. He values power and stability over looks, instead of making wands nice, shiny, breakable. He even remembers every single wand he ever sold, as if something matters aside from the money win and money loss at the end of the fiscal year.      

Quantity versus Quality, where muggles believe in technological progress, a wizard develops through spiritual exercise only. A wizard may flaunt his house and dress, if he does not study excessively, if he does not learn rigorously how to control and expand his mind and magic and power, he is a weak and less than respected wizard.

Yet with magic, just as with muggle technology, it is betimes helpful to halt and ask oneself – “What is it that I desire? What is it that I need, and how can it be attained?” 

With the Dark Ritual, specifically, you can reach beyond the impossible, be it from the standpoint of the magical lore or the muggle science. What is the impossible you desire? What do you need, that you ask me for this power? The power to do what?”

There is no time left, and Harry places the letter in the envelope, whereupon a single “Sowilo” sign is drawn. It is signed with rune Tiwaz. Harry pockets the letter. Harry runs.

***

Professor Quirrell amiably stutters through something with werewolves, when Harry flees into the back of his mind and ponders Thomas’ newest letter. Something impossible, something big that Harry wishes for, what can it be?

The world expects Harry to save the world from Voldemort, yet Harry is curious about Voldemort, about the man’s unique knowledge and power. The man he never met, unless in the visions – memories, the Magic suggested. Not to mention, there was not a single sighting of the Dark Lord’s presence within the past ten years. How can Harry fight an opponent there is not? Even if the Magic of the Dark Ritual could find and destroy Voldemort’s remains wherever they are, can it be satisfying for Harry to not even see the man he is possibly prophesied to vanquish, the man who killed Harry’s parents, as Harry opposes him?

Harry wishes for a family. To ask Magic to resurrect his parents however, would deny the many, many times Harry assured himself he is indeed fine with their death. More so, being orphaned at the young age, being dropped at the Dursleys, Harry refuses to accept blood relation a guarantee that Harry’s new family loves Harry, loves Harry as the boy he is now, and not a baby he once was. Can Magic even undo his mother’s sacrifice?

Harry wishes for a family, where Harry is able to decide, who Harry is and whom Harry loves. He thinks it his right, as he not only survived the Dursleys, he no longer needs to rely upon the Dursleys, as Mr. Malfoy selfishly assures and Harry knows. He is young, he is rich, he is bright, he can be… loveable.

Harry can wish for peace in the world, yet Voldemort’s peace and Dumbledore’s peace are not the same, and probably not the same as the peace Harry imagines. How to determine only one definition to any abstract term, if to any term there are billions subjective definitions of? Both Severus Snape and James Potter thought it their happiness to walk Lily Evans down the aisle, yet there is only one Lily, one Earth. Happiness, at least happiness tied to a thing and a body, and an environment is always a compromise. People’s wishes overlap, resources are finite.

The AIDS medication. Harry can ask Magic for ways to heal incurable illnesses. Certainly no one can wish for people to suffer – cannot wish for a war. There are several wars right now… and a war industry. Harry, stop. It is a good thing to cure every illness. But... Is it your heart’s desire? Is it a need, a personal need that keeps you awake at night, just as the lack of food and water demonstrably do? Maybe, if you worked with terminally ill individuals, if you saw them struggle and lose, day after day. If you dedicated your life to finding a cure to even a single illness, it would be a need. If Harry was incurably ill himself, it would be a need. Instead, Harry is a healthy boy of eleven years, who lives hidden in a magical world and has only a faintest of ideas, what he might do and aspire for in the future. He does not even desire for immortality, as young and foolish as he is. Is not there a whole life still waiting for Harry?!

The Dark Ritual, Harry was overly focused on the question whether or not Harry is even capable of it, that he forgot to find something personal and worthy to ask from Magic. But how can Harry know if he can do the impossible in the time of need, if he never previously succeeded in a reasonably controlled environment?

Is this… the bravery everyone speaks about?

***

“Mr. P-P-Potter, ab-bout your last asssignment…”

Werewolves are out in the forest. Students flee the room. Harry pauses mid-step, in the teacher’s eyes there is an expecting glint and the laughter.

“Help me”, motions Professor Quirrell. Harry takes the poster, where a man-animal is depicted. Professor - his books. 

In his office, Professor lets the words fall – “Bear with me. You are the only person around here I can talk with, thus indulge me in my liberties”.   

It is an old question, but so far, it never left Harry’s tongue – “Why do you wear a mask, Sir?”

Why not?

Professor folds his hands on the table, speaks nonchalantly – “It is not like you wear your heart on a sleeve. Most of the time you behave as if you have not a heart at all”.

“I…” and words fail.

“I take some joy in observing you, Potter. Every word leaving your lips, it is to follow a specific sense you assigned it”.

“That is how communication functions”, shrugs Harry.

“Only in the meaning, not in expression. Muggle scientists – and you must know, I was the Muggle Studies teacher at Hogwarts - they count six basic emotions: anger, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness, surprise. Can you tell me, that you were angry with one of your friends and showed it?”

“I have no reason to feel anger or fear…” escapes Harry.

“What about joy? What is the time you sincerely laughed in the presence of others? You did not. It is not healthy to bottle up everything. If you do not wish to show how you feel, there must be a way for you to otherwise release your emotions, be it by channelling them into suitable activities, or alternatively spend time around people you actually trust…”

“Is this what you wish me for?” summarises Harry.

There is a pause, then Professor offers – “Do you think I actually trust you, Harry?”

“You trust me as far as you can predict me”, an easy answer.

“Good boy”, smiles Professor.

“And spending time with me, you learn about me, making me more predictable”.

Professor suggests – “Tea”?

Settled back, with steaming cups at hand, Harry takes action – “I do not think emotions solve anything”, Harry explains.

“If I have a problem, I can either deduce or imagine - usually both - the ways I can solve it. If I merely tell someone how angry and hurt I am, they care not.”

“You are wrong," reprimands Professor. "Foolish boy, you forget that there are different ways to express your feelings. Have not you learnt that magic, strong magic feeds of your feelings?

Instead of suppressing your anger, because you think it counterproductive, allow it to become the spark to your magic, which you throw at the source of your anger.

If you feel very strongly, it can become your magic even before you learn how to “logically” apply it. If you feel very strongly, indeed… “ Professor’s mask of a face is unreadable.

“I cannot,” whispers Harry. Dark stifling cupboard, small, hard, hungry, cold, cold and lonely.

“I cannot. It only makes the situation worse in the long run”.

***

Whilst education is compulsory in the United Kingdom from the age of five on, school attendance is not. Aunt Petunia conveniently forgot to enrol Harry, possibly favoured by the fact, that Harry already vanished from ten to six every day, and how the saying goes – out of the sight, out of mind.

Admittedly, Aunt Petunia bestowed Harry with a stack of leftover paper and pencils, and implied – “You can read the newspaper”. They write anything that is important in the newspaper.

The first time that Harry is to attend school, he is nine, and after the friendly suggestion from Dudley’s class teacher. A week before Harry’s first September the first, aunt Petunia took Harry aside and asked the following –

“Can you read?”

“Yes”, answered Harry.

“Can you write?”

“Yes”, answered Harry.

“Well, now for a science question…,” mused aunt Petunia, wringing her hands. “Alright. What has the least calories? An apple, an egg or a steak?”

“The apple”, answered Harry.

Therefore, Harry was deemed acceptable to attend school.

***

School was positive, insofar as Harry ate an additional warm meal a day, as the Dursleys avoided to openly let a child starve. Negative, as being a full time school, it drastically reduced the hours Harry can spend at the library.

It happened in the very first Literacy class, that the teacher, one Miss Fordingbridge, an elderly short stout lady with a charming voice, she called Harry’s name and Harry reacted not. One reason for Harry’s lack of reaction certainly was that from a “boy” and a “freak”, Harry was suddenly upgraded to a “Potter”. It was strange. Then again, the class was to participate in the reading exercise, that is pupil after pupil, they read out a small passage of text. What a boring text it was! Harry has long finished this text, and the next one. Harry was presently occupied with staring out the window at the deserted schoolyard.

“Mr. Potter”, Miss Fordingbridge insisted, “The school personal is aware of the special needs that made your aunt bear the burden to educate you single-handedly in the past. A fine woman your aunt is, she certainly taught you to treat her with respect and attention. Here at school you are going to treat your teacher with respect and pay attention to what is going on in class, for otherwise you not only disrespect your teacher and classmates, you interrupt the lessons as well, preventing both yourself and your classmates from gaining knowledge. Do you understand, Mr. Potter?”

“Yes”, swallows Harry. The teacher then directs Harry’s neighbour, a quiet girl with pigtails, to show Harry the place in text where he is to continue reading. Harry reads, with all the superior fluency of someone who practically breaths books.

“No, No, Mr. Potter”, interrupts Harry Miss Fordingbridge, shakes her head. “Mr. Potter, if given a task, you should not cheat. Your neighbour, she was so nice to whisper the words to you, has not she?”

Stunned, Harry assured – “No one has prompted anything to me. I am perfectly capable of reading myself, Madam”.

“Nonsense, Mr. Potter.” Miss Fordingbridge looks at Harry, disbelievingly – “You should not lie, Mr. Potter. First, you show disrespect, and now you place yourself as a cheat and a liar? There is nothing to be ashamed of, if you have not mastered reading as of yet. That is what the school is for. Why don’t you try again, Mr. Potter. This time though, on your own merit?”

Harry craves to backtalk, to state that he can prove here and now and as many times as the teacher desires it, that Harry is perfectly capable of reading. Instead, he looks at Miss Fordingbridge, at his whispering classmates… “I shall try, Madam” is Harry’s answer. Harry stutters through the text, always taking a break, whenever he sees a word exceeding just two syllables. He creatively exchanges “will” for “might” and “had” for “ain’t”. Miss Fordingbridge devotedly helps Harry along and alerts him to Harry’s mistakes. Afterwards Miss Fordingbridge praises –

“That was very good Mr. Potter. One should stand to one’s weaknesses, for only accepting a weakness, we can work on overcoming it. That is why you are coming to school now. That we can help you here. That we can work on making a better pupil, and a better person out of you”.

She motions for another child to continue. Harry feels as if he betrayed something, something precious… the books.

Miss Fordingbridge’s hair flares blue.

***

Harry learns that Miss Fordingbridge makes a dedicated teacher as long as everything stays in her comfort zone. She is a strong believer in equality. Practically speaking, Miss Fordingbridge tries hard that no pupil falls beyond the class average.

She thinks herself a progressive woman, meaning she and colleagues subscribe for certain popular scientific journals on the topics of pedagogy and psychology. There Miss Fordingbridge learns that on average girls employ more of their left-brain hemisphere, making them better in language related tasks. In turn, boys rely on in their case better-developed right brain half, thus succeeding in numeracy and science.

Miss Fordingbridge enjoys a good relationship with Mrs. Petunia Dursley. Many a time she offered the poor woman a word of compassion and advice, as to how to deal with this difficult boy. Finally, self-sacrificingly, Miss Fordingbridge suggests, the boy may be better off at school in the professional hands and in the company of his age mates. She is ready to take him with open arms and support him despite his disabilities.

This boy, whom Miss Fordingbridge expects to be on a lower end of average, and a boy. This boy reads with a proficiency of an adult woman. This cannot be.

Instead of challenging her general perceptions, Miss Fordingbridge declares the boy a liar, and thankfully, the boy contradicts not.

Regrettably, the boy’s achievements remain on the lower edge of average, and the boy stays a loner.  Such is the price for home-schooling, thinks Miss Fordingbridge. Advisable in some cases, the early lack of socialisation oftentimes prevents the child from learning how to form lasting relationships later in life.

***

It is remarkable, that after dedicating his last essay to the still living Albus Dumbledore, T.M., he – the otherwise avid singer of forgotten tales, he now decides to address the topic of history as a whole. He asks – “What is history? What is there useful about history? Is history needed?”

Twice T.M. asks these questions, regarding the time as a line, including therefore all things past; time as a segment from when an individual enters this world, gains on experience, attaining a personal history he carries with him, influencing him and his future decisions.

As Harry has yet to move beyond the first few pages, he can only guess why T.M. calls much of the known and taught history “a luxury, we cannot afford, as the superfluous is the enemy of the necessary.” Fortunately - or maybe less so - it is an easy guess, since Professor Binns’ history lessons are literally dead hours, where a dead teacher talks in a dead voice about individuals and events only the dead can appreciate. At least Harry cannot imagine a single student to take delight in the History of Magic classes as they take place at Hogwarts. Even Hermione for all her swotting, she requires all her astounding self-control and concentration to keep taking notes until the bell rings.

Quite the opposite is the way T.M. writes about the lost ages - as if he himself is there and lives what he writes, and writes what he feels, as it is the soul’s deepest desire to write not about “history”, but those dreams that are currently and powerfully on T.M.’s mind, his own dreams. It is a past, but this past, it burns alive in T.M.’s veins, it serves the living –

_“The past and the present are one and the same, as beyond obvious variety, we detect the same ever-lasting human types in their unchanged significance”._

The circularity of historical perception, it too is a double-edged sword. History can serve the living only insofar as it subjectively remains alive. On the other hand though, it questions the achievements of the living. If every act they assume to write themselves, is in truth but the eternal repetition of the primordial song. Is it possible to a human at all to lastingly change the course of history?

“It is possible for the human to be _alive_ ,” T.M. answers the question for himself. 

***

Regarding the human’s personal history, T.M. remarks that the happiest are those who live in here and now, taking every single moment as an unprecedented wonder, incomparable, as there is no memory it could be compared to. There are only distinct, separated moments of pain and joy, a flowing river as it carries one, softly, to the water mouth.

_“A most powerful and monstrous nature, it would seek after the history of nations and individuals, learning it, absorbing it. What it cannot quell, it forgets, closes from its mind, that it no longer remembers there are people and passions and desires beyond its own horizon. Everything alive, it can prosper only within a horizon…_

_There is a limit, from which on the past must be forgotten, unless it empoisons the presence. It depends upon the individual power to grow, to incorporate the foreign, and to heal one’s wounds. To replace what is lost. To rebuild what is broken. There are beings nearly void of such power. From a single experience, an ache and injustice, from a small sanguineous fissure, they bleed to death, beyond remedy...”_

“Not you too…”, murmurs Harry, puts book aside.

Harry cannot forget.            

***

Harry’s relatives hate magic so much because magic is out of their control. It is not predictable. Harry fares the best if he learns the pattern and follows the pattern. For example, if Harry stays at library every day from ten to six except for Sunday, he had better not to return to the Dursley household ahead of schedule even if the library sometimes closes early and remains closed due to administrative reasons. If Harry’s relatives know that Harry is always away from ten to six, they take regularity for regulation. They acknowledge that something happens, without questioning why it happens. As tradition becomes a law, it becomes absolute.

Dudley eats on average two and half slices of bacon for breakfast, and Uncle Vernon three slices. Aunt Petunia makes it with half a slice, as she fears to gain the same weight, she benevolently accepts on her husband and son. Harry ought to prepare seven slices of bacon every morning, such as to in six cases of seven still receive half a slice himself, without giving Aunt Petunia a reason to punish Harry for making more food than necessary, therefore wasting food.

 The family watches television from half past seven to half ten every night. Since Harry has the audacity to be exempt from duties for the majority of the day, the moment Harry returns home he is to first assist Aunt Petunia with cooking dinner, serve dinner, wash the dishes as Dursleys have dinner. He is afterwards to walk through the house fixing whatever untidiness has made itself known; return to his cupboard, preparing to sleep.

As Harry needs dinner, Harry slips out of his cupboard at quarter past nine to return within ten minutes at most. Without making a sound, Harry arrives in the kitchen, where he takes exactly one slice of bread, two slices of sausage – no more than one slice a type. And depending on Aunt Petunia’s last purchases, Harry takes either an apple, a tomato or a carrot. Then, he returns to his cupboard, and pretends to sleep deeply and soundly, when at quarter before ten Uncle Vernon locks the cupboard for the night.

Harry calculates his schedule precisely. He cannot afford to be caught eating, therefore Harry avoids any time the probability is high there comes an advertisement, which Uncle Vernon insists they watch in order to know the current trends. Dudley channel surfs with no regard to the fatherly wisdom. Aunt Petunia hurries to pacify the emerging discussion, as she retrieves snacks, as it is harder to talk while eating. At quarter past nine, however, the daily episode of the daily show is nearing its magnificent end, meaning a rise in tension the devoted watchers experience. Now, they love television box the most, their personal surroundings the least, and Harry strikes.

Harry has a treasure. Invaluable treasure, which has cost Harry a pound. It is a wristwatch with a digital display and a red plastic wristband. Blue light illuminates the display when Harry presses a button, allowing Harry to see the time even if he is stuck in the cupboard.

Once Harry discovered the patterns of predictability, he knew he is in need of a timepiece. Harry looked in the neighbourhood shops, half in mind to pillage Aunt Petunia’s glass jar. Aunt Petunia hates to pay with really tiny money pieces, as it makes other customers waiting. That is why, she regularly empties her purse from the one and two pence coins, putting them into a big glass jar. Once the jar is full, Uncle Vernon gets it to the bank to be weighed and exchanged for the proper money, and Dursleys go to the cinema, for "The penny saved is the pound earned". The jar stands in the living room, and Harry would need to place a small chair upon a big chair if he hopes to reach it. It is currently quite full and surely weighs a lot… Lost in thoughts Harry almost oversees a glint of silver in the puddle of dirty water left after the yesterday’s rain. How probable it is to find a pound? It was a pound! They had watches on sale! Harry has a watch!

Harry tries so hard to be predictable, that every occasion of accidental magic, that still happens, washes over him like a tsunami of screams and blows and darkness. Then again, Harry has a watch, a cheap plastic watch that works perfectly for years without a single change of the battery. Electricity does not go along with magic, but Harry’s watch works at Hogwarts. Harry’s watch works on magic even before Harry can knowingly apply such, for Harry’s fears are strong indeed.

***

“My Harry, “ the lines flow before Harry’s eyes as he opens the envelope Malfoy’s eagle owl carried.

“My Harry, ” tastes sweet on the lips, tastes personal.

“My Harry, ” as Thomas writes,

“I am proud of you, as it stands without doubt that you have established your first contact with Magic. The circle of Life and Death is Magic. Allow me to explain.

Take a piece of paper. Draw a sun. It is no longer a piece of paper it once was. In a sense, it died, and yet it lives on in the picture of the sun.

If you look at the sun, a rapid collection of moments woven together by memory, it appears as if the sun stands still, frozen in time and space, where in truth sun is a star burning indescribable amounts of hydrogen into helium, and as unsteady as the ocean.

Even those things that appear solid and steady undergo transformation. They cease to exist the way they were before, to become what they are in the present and in the future. Thereby their past selves dissolve to make way for their future appearances. The principle of change applies not only to the objects, as we understand the paper and the sun to be, but also to the so-called living beings.

It is indeed irrevocable, that for us in order to live, we need to kill.

The well water we drink, plants and animals we feed upon, trees we fell to create dwellings and heat, mines driven into earth to supply mankind with minerals and precious gems… Organic and inorganic material, we destroy its current form to remodel it after our own needs and desires. It faces death, then rebirth, becoming a part of us.

To live we need to kill, and be it even “just plants”. Any living creature evolves by devouring others. Among the Light wizards, there lives a belief that every kill lacerates a person’s soul. Ah, but if every single murder we commit in order to live were to break our soul, there would not be a soul left to speak of!

Indeed, it is about impossible to break one’s soul. The rumour’s origins, however, I see in the doctrine of the mightful Occidental religion, which subordinates the Earth to the man. Just as an attempt to differentiate magical “creatures” from “beings” postulated – “'Beings' are those who can speak the human tongue.”

Does it truly make a difference, if we can or we cannot speak the same tongue as those we sacrifice and we murder?

Destruction precedes, it is the requirement for any creation, as is change. If your parents have died to protect you, Harry, then their death was needed for your survival. Your survival has killed your parents, but at the same time they have become a part of you, live on in you. You shall honour their sacrifice by not rendering it meaningless. You shall live no matter what!

Not the murder in itself is despicable, as you shall take what you need, my Dear, but if you dishonour the sacrifices in you by not living and living to your very fullest. Live, evolve, and make every life you take worth it!

As regarding the Ritual, allow me to say it like this – It failed because you wanted it, but you did not want it. Instinctively, even during the Ritual you have sought for alternative solutions, those more common to you, where you yourself retain the control of the situation instead of giving yourself over to Magic. This is the problem with muggle-raised - mudblood and halfblood children, as they tend to have little to less magical exposure prior Hogwarts. Once they learn about magic, they think it fun and all, less so a part of themselves. Pureblood children on the other hand grow up with magic, alright, but in turn they do not value Magic. They see it a tool, just as muggles use electricity. You cannot appeal to Magic with either of these attitudes. If you wish to arrive somewhere, you need to trust Magic. Trust it as a special part of yourself. Trust it and it alone to solve your problem. It might.

Ah, and please, call me Tom. “Thomas” makes me feel old, whereas I rather be eternal.

Wishing you the best,

Tom.”          

That was unexpected.  

                             

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> History musings after F. Nietzsches' "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life" (The Second Untimely Meditation). 
> 
> Thank you for the reading and I would love to hear your thoughts!


	14. Theory

It was unexpected.

As it first happened, Harry eagerly explained it away with a naturally occurring variation. The second time he called it a coincidence. Now, it was glaring at him with all the dignity of four letters spread on Harry’s bed covers. 

Four letters in vintage cursive, daring and eloquent. Four slivers of T.M.’s soul to two origins. Half to half, delivered by Draco and Mr. Malfoy; resting on Harry’s pillow. Blank envelope or one covered with an Old Days sign. “Call me Tom, my Harry” and “Tiwaz” and “Sowilo”. Tom wrote on a thin paper, as if from a muggle notebook, the other… Thomas, he used standard issue parchment, as the one Harry’s homework devoured. With a trembling finger, Harry stroked the letters, comparing one to one, two to two. Rough, yellowish and cragged parchment opposing a slick, originally white, yet with the time faded paper. Do not Thomas’ writings seem a little shaky, less perfect around the edges as if after a decade of disuse?

Thomas imparted in a roundabout style, limned a sea of metaphors, and seemingly random observations – you dove. In the farthest depths, in the last few lines you discovered an oyster, which you spend the next hour in hopes to crack open.

Tom was a waterfall, strong and vicious. Tom wrote clean cut sentences, windswept and terrible. He never danced around a question, made things appear easy that could never be. He was painstakingly direct, relying on charm to soften his words, his logic – give words credibility.

Tom whispered promises in Harry’s ear, promises of greatness, held his hand, had an arm across Harry’s shoulders – Come, come, boy, lovely boy. One more step over the edge. Have not you always dreamt of flying?

Tom smiled sharp, eyes eager, as Tom vied for a follower. Thomas, why, Thomas made sure Harry reads the small print afore selling his soul to devil.

Passionate Tom, cautious Thomas… Run with Tom, drown in Thomas… T.M.

Are they twins to each other, as the name implies? Brothers? Is Tom the son to Thomas? Tom – the man who Lucius Malfoy believes to be the author of “Essays”. Thomas, the man who received a no-address letter. Tom, who writes the instructions to the Dark Ritual. Thomas, who emphasises the fine points and the crucial ones.

Tom, Thomas, T.M. The same and yet different, as if reflections in separate mirrors, an equation with multiple solutions, where it should be one. Unexpected, palpable. Harry faces confusion.

***

As Harry was seven and cousin Dudley was seven, and cousin Dudley was of the age to dabble in social activities, cousin Dudley befriended four boys from school – Piers Polkiss, Malcolm, Dennis and Gordon. The group soon discovered themselves in a need for manly bonding activities - something exciting, not too easy, with a touch of forbidden. Something as old as the history of men. Challenging, impossible, stupid if attempted alone. A good fun, thrilling, when in company of peers. Dudley and mates discover hunt.

Caught in an orderly settlement of wood and concrete, the juvenile huntsmen chase after the flying away birds, fleet-footed cats, barking dogs. Scratching a bitten leg, banging at pixel aliens, the boys bemoan the hardships of modern age. How, they wonder, how can boys grow big and mighty and popular like the cool people, the heroes in all their favourite cartoons and films – Conan the Barbarian, Rocky and Rambo and Terminator… How can boys expect to save the day and get the chick – long legs, red pout, as all the great guys have, without an adequate training?

For the greater good sacrifices are. In the settlement of glass and plastic absent are the wild animals to aim a spear and arrow. There is a freak in Dudley’s home, breathing the same air, wasting the same language. Freak is quite good at running, even better than Piers. To catch the freak the group has to think up strategy, develop manoeuvres. The group has to cooperate, to focus on each other’s strengths, to look out for the freak’s weaknesses, for dead-end corners. For sensitive old ladies crossing the path. There are many ways to disrupt the hunt. Unyielding, together, the boys are successful. They have the freak plastered against a wall of hard stones, close off a possible escape. They tower over the freak, examples of power and glory. They are titans walking on earth, together they are strong. The freak covers in a dirty corner, trembling beneath the almighty stares.

Do you see it? – A deeper understanding, a rush of superbness, it wanders from Malcolm and Dennis over Dudley and Piers to Gordon. Beyond the pleasure of hunt, there is a drunkenness of a feast. In celebration, Dudley tastes the first hit, as Dudley’s fist connects with the freak’s arm, where the freak tries to shield the softer entrails.

“Wicked”, whistles Malcolm, as the freak’s back hits the wall because of the impact. He almost slides down the wall, but catches himself at the last moment, staggering stands up. There is a violent feeling of wrongness that the freak should stand in the same way as the titans stand.

“Go, Go Big D-e-eeee!” shout Dudley’s friends, cheering him on. Dudley’s heart swells from pride, glowing in his friends’ admiration. It is Dudley’s best-hidden secret, but sometimes… Dudley doubts himself. His parents are most supporting, of course, but there are signs that Dudley, that he is not exactly the… quickest in school, and there are actually things… that Dudley cannot do. However, as he stands with his dear friends, laughing and encouraging, stands tall and mighty, Dudley’s worries are naught. Dudley rains his outstanding weight at the freak, forcing the freak to his rightful place, forcing him down, him crouching beneath the group’s feet. For a good measure, Dudley adds heavy hits with his new sporty sneakers. The freak moves not, clearly acknowledging the friends’ superiority.

“Wicked! Let’s do it again!” exclaims Gordon, deftly stepping upon the freak’s ugly glasses. For now though, the tired, prosperous hunters retreat to the base, where the cold sweet ice cream is waiting.

On the verge of a slipping consciousness, spitting blood, the freak swears to avoid the group at all costs.

***

Once burnt, he pales at the mere sight of hearth. He develops routines to never be at the same place as the persecutors, unless it is in a highly controlled environment as the classroom is. The activity of “Harry Hunting” is further restricted in the immediate vicinity of “No fun!” and “Not my vases!” adults as Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia are. There are many forms of abuse, and children, and especially children in close-knit peer groups, as Harry knows, are the most uninhibited.  

Harry becomes an expert at avoidance. He glides into the smallest openings, vanishes under the cover of darkness, flies up the roof.

Harry is caught and spots a constant ache within the expanse between Harry’s knees and neck. There Uncle Vernon’s belt of many voices chanted the melody of teaching Harry to never do anything, anything outrageous again.

Harry is very good at avoiding, yet he cannot escape the memories, as they seep through the breaches in Hogwarts’ aged walls. Initially the wizarding world was full of distractions, and a beautiful hope and a fairy tale. Now, in the banality of everyday occurrences, in the reminder from a darkest dream, Harry sees himself clearly. Having graduated from the game animal, Harry is a gladiator. Well-nigh naked, in one hand he holds his wand and a collection of Grade One spells. In the other his shield made of “Essays” and Tom-Thomas’ elusive shadow. His arena is the wizarding world. With a heavy breath he waits for his opponents skilful and merciless.

Harry is trapped, his feet magically chained, the public cheers. He cannot escape. Harry is adept at avoidance, but his shield bursts. He cannot run from himself. A question once surfaced, he cannot forget. Tom-Thomas, how, where, Who?!

Harry takes a step forward and two back. Curiosity killed the cat. A restless mind on the shaking legs - once with burnt fingers, he fears for the arm. He paces the cold, dark corridors, where every breath causes a cloud of steam. He runs into a wall of a person.

***

There are hands running up Harry’s robe, taping imaginary dust. Hands fixate Harry’s face in the emptiness in-between. Make the boy look in the eyes of the teacher.

“Your concentration was abhorrent lately. Are you… “a hard necessary word – “Are you okay, Potter?”   

Professor Snape’s deep eyes, warm hands, steady voice.

“I am a coward,” utters Harry, when in truth, what he wants to ask is… Is it possible to forget the past and to heal?

“There is nothing wrong in a cowardice,” shrugs Professor, unless – “Are you aiming for the position of the Light’s spy in the Dark Lord’s lair?” 

Harry laughs despite himself. “It would take an extremely brave man to spy on His Darkness”.

“Just an extremely desperate one”, suggests Professor, fixing the shape of Harry’s Slytherin tie, putting the things in a perspective. It is the late afternoon at the wizarding world arena, asleep the servants. High flies the phoenix, deep hides the serpent king.

It cannot be life threatening to at least speak with Harry’s other… friend. The person, who wants Harry. Harry’s company. He implied this himself. Professor Quirrell.  

***

There was the young Professor Quirrell, with his blond, balding thin hair and his attentive blue eyes, sitting in the wooden armchair in his office, the usual cup of hot bitter tea in his hand, the other resting lazily upon a piece of blank parchment. And there was Harry sitting across from Professor Quirrell, Harry’s left ring finger making slow-paced circles on the table’s porous surface.

“Sir”, Harry said, “I wanted to ask you something. There is a theory that to every person there is at least one look-alike. I wonder however, if a person can be another person’s counterpart, but not in the body, in mind…”

“That is an interesting piece of thought”, smiled Professor Quirrell, ”And it is without doubt a thought that has an end and a beginning, if coming from yourself. Thus, pray care to elaborate?”

Harry took a deep breath and asked -

“Sir, I wondered what you know about… about the author of “Essays”?”

Professor looked at him, the tea in his cup cycled anti-clockwise, a multilayered – And…?

“I had some questions regarding the book and I thought it advantageous to try and contact the author himself. In fact, I wrote two letters addressed at one Thomas Myrddin.”

“Two?” said Professor Quirrell.

“I wished to exhaust all delivery methods accessible to myself. Aside from the owl delivery, I approached a person who allegedly was in contact with Thomas.”

“You did?” said Professor Quirrell.

“Yes… well… I received an answer, and then Mr. Malfoy sent me another…”

“Lucius did?”

“And, sir, after exchanging a couple of letters, I felt as if I was conversing with not one but two look-alike individuals. Actually, one of them even asked me to call him Tom…”

Professor’s lips about began to form an exclamation – “He did?!”, as Harry hurries to continue –

“But you told me you knew the author, sir? I mean, - sorry, I mean, if you cannot tell me any details, obviously – I just knew if anyone could help me with this situation, you could – so I just thought I would – “

Harry was genuinely hesitant to ask. So far, Professor Quirrell volunteered whatever information he shared about Tom-Thomas. Harry had not too much experience of trying to wheedle information out of possibly reluctant people, but he wanted the information very badly. In fact, Harry wanted it from the very moment he first read a page of “Essays”.    

“Well”, said Professor, not looking at Harry, but examining the white of his fingernails – “It cannot hurt to tell you, that your theory is wrong. That person has not gotten a doubleganger”.

“I do not quite understand how that works, though, sir”, Harry insists. “Are you truly certain, that Tom is not some relative of Thomas…?”

“Not possible”, Professor’s voice carefully controlled, “From my sources that man is the last member of his family still alive”.  

“Oh”, nods Harry, a little crushed.

 “Well,” smiles Professor, “Aside from Lucius and myself, who else knows of your correspondence?”

“No one” mutters Harry.

“You have not told a soul? What about these friends of yours?” wonders Professor.

“Of course not!” defends Harry, “They would not understand. They are not like you…”

The tea is cold. “Ah,” Professor sighs melancholily, “Just out of curiosity. What exactly have you been writing about with this Tom…?”

“Mmmm…” Harry knots his fingers together and apart. “That we kill in order to evolve ourselves, but it is about impossible to break one’s soul…”

“Of course”, agrees Professor. “And have you elaborated about the ways one actually splits one’s soul?”

“No, sir” speaks Harry. “I can only guess that it must take another Dark Ritual to achieve. What I cannot understand, however, sir… Why would someone even wish to do such a thing?”

“Why indeed…” Professor sighs.

They sit for a moment gazing at each other. Harry feels happy that he can voice his curiosity, his confusion, but troubled for the lack of answers. With hopeful eyes, Harry tries afresh –

“If Tom is not a son, twin, brother or a clone of Thomas, what can he be…?”

Harry remembers then, how he once upon a time tried to discover what is wrong with Harry himself, that everyone called Harry a “freak”. He sat in the library, and sought for answers in a thick book on psychology of mental disorders, that listed names and frequency of occurrence and common symptoms... Harry has an idea –

“You do not mean… If he physically _is_ a single person… Then does he have… maybe, possibly… a Multiple Personality Disorder?”

Professor sputters on his tea and has to cough for a few times, violently.

“Merlin, Harry!” yelps Professor Quirrell. “Do you have to always seek an explanation by the means of the muggle science, if we find ourselves in the magical world discussing a Wizard?!”

Harry was looking at Professor Quirrell as though he had never seen him plainly before -“Do you imply… He actually _has_ split his soul?!”

Professor’s hand twitches, twitches again. Then slowly crawls up, where it presses its palm against Professor’s lovely pale face, still twitching. Harry reads Professor’s current expression as the one treading a fine line between “Are you stupid?” and “You are too clever for your own good...”   

“Oh”, exhales Harry and remembers all the unfinished homework there is. A multitude of unfinished homework.

Professor lets Harry go.

***

Tom, Thomas, T. M. Multiple Personality Disorder, as far as Harry recollects, is characterised by a distinct switch in identities or personalities the individual finds himself to alternately exhibit.  The single personalities thereby are rarely aware of each other, making them unable to remember what their counterpart did once in control of the shared body. Such would explain Mr. Malfoy’s insistence he is a necessary mediator in Tom-Harry’s relationship, despite Harry having already received a letter from Thomas. Explain, how only Tom’s second letter is a direct response to Harry’s panicked questions. Why it happened that T.M. answered one of Harry’s letters – probably the initial one, twice. Harry feels an odd sense of accomplishment, of honour to have caught an interest of both - Tom and Thomas.

Engaging, passionate Tom. Wise, cautious Thomas. T.M. Three heads has a runespoor. The number of split personalities can go as high as hundreds. The trigger, as muggle scientists assume, lies in severe traumatic experiences in childhood – physical, psychological, even sexual abuse. Not able to cope on his own the child develops alter egos better equipped to handle specific situations and tasks. If a broken soul is a self-induced magical version of a Multiple Personality Disorder, would it be right to assume T.M. himself, he strived to at least part-time to forget a dolorous history of a worst childhood… cold, aching, lonely, hungry.

Can Harry transfer his personal experiences to T.M. only because there is a certain sense of kinship, of affection Harry feels for the other man?

Unless Professor Quirrell is willing to tell about his one time acquaintance, Harry’s only source of information consists of four letters and book. As the currently best way to learn about T.M., Harry continues reading.

***

T.M. argues, there are three ways of how History can serve the living.

A monumental history teaches of what is possible because already accomplished. To a great mind, it can be a motivation and a stepping-stone to even greater achievements.

Throughout history and in our days, T.M. laments, the overbearing majority of population a small mind has. Incapable of greatness themselves, they separate cause and effect. They bask in the cemented canon of an already accomplished greatness, repressing the new creativity. “What more is there to seek? The Greatness is here, here!” They desire not that a new greatness emerges, new paths threads, because small they are.

An antiquarian history is a longing to preserve and honour the traditions of old. A feeling of belong because of the ties to one’s ancestors, where seemingly plain things become dear and special.

The first danger is to overly focus upon past, letting feelings to subdue reason, when dealing with future. The second is to forget that them are feelings, that give the past events their personal, true importance. A mere gathering of plain “objective” facts - as is thought most educational in our days, is of no consequence, just as a person is a living, a breathing being and no encyclopaedia.

The critical approach comes in the times of need, when one has to judge and denounce history, break the past patterns for a vision of future. The conviction is never just, nor rational - Live with it! “Everything that rises is worth to perish”.

Then, they abuse what was - to highlight what is. Invent a golden past, a dark past. A damned and an enlightened now. As they measure and reinvent and lie a history through the lens of the modern era.

_“With a boundless energy the great mind employs true history to create a world of his own. This alone is his ambition. He is no encyclopaedia, not a gathering of meaningless facts...”_

For the first time T.M. defines his understanding of the term “culture”, which the wizarding world needs yet lacks. A culture, T.M. writes, is a concordance of the form and the content, of the external and internal appearance. A culture is only possible in an honest compliance to one’s instincts and nature, and not a senseless parroting of an old man’s lore. It is a grave difference to not merely talk of goodness, but to act benevolently. To have a culture is to openly be what one is, instead of empty words and deceit.

T.M. speaks of the International Stature of Secrecy that compels wizards to assimilate themselves to the muggles, pretend to be muggles, and otherwise hide and always fear a capital punishment. He sees such detrimental to the development of a unique and strong, and prospering magical culture.

In truth, Harry feels, T.M. beweeps his own integrity in a world of narrow-minded dangerous conformist masses. This essay is T.M.’s accusal, he himself is not allowed a unity between his thoughts and his smiles, his beliefs and his words, his drives and his deeds, his soul, body and mind. That T.M. finds himself coerced to hide behind a mask of lies and deceit and empty charm and heartless promises.

“That is not me!” he cries. “Why must not I to be me? Why would not you accept me for the person I am, honestly am?!

Why do you enforce this split within myself?”

Then, Harry thinks, T.M. breaks his soul, separating aspects of himself as to create distinct personalities he can switch in-between rather than outright lying.

A young and passionate and hopeful Tom, who has yet to face his great disappointments.

The older and cautious and sceptical and elusive Thomas, who slips in and out of a painful reality.

Given a task as to for example buy a house, Tom might find it in himself the enthusiasm to venture out and seek a variety of options, but it would be Thomas to proofread and sign the contract. Given a raid from the Ministry, Thomas calmly greets the investigators with a winning and an amicable “Welcome”, where Tom charismatically steals the workers’ hearts and the minds.

There is too much similarity between Thomas and Tom to form two distinct personalities. If not for the favour of the circumstances, Harry would have completely overseen the difference, as Tom speaks the same tongue as Thomas.

They are one and the same person trying a variety of masks. Harry requires a better theory to grasp the effect of splitting one’s soul.

There are four letters resting on top of Harry’s bed covers.

Harry takes one.

***

“My dear Tom,” and Harry pauses, grimaces. What Harry wants to write, it goes along the lines of – I am most curious about you. There is nothing simple about you, I bet it is a part of your ambition in life to become as complicated as you can possibly imagine. Your heart is like a chamber of secrets, and it is a cheesy thing to say and to wonder about, but what kind of a password you take? Am I made to speak the same tongue as you?

His name is Tom, stray thought besets Harry’s mind. Why would Tom bother to correct the form otherwise, if it was a wrong name either way. Tom, beginning with a “T” and “Tiwaz”.

Tom.

Harry begins with a letter to Tom, as Tom seems the more accessible aspect of Harry’s two correspondents. In any case, Harry ought to quell his curiosity, as Tom shall tell Harry the truth on his own terms, when he feels like trusting and respecting Harry. When Tom feels like Harry deserves the gift of truth, and Harry earns to be seen an equal.

Harry tries to win Tom by writing an honest and profound answer.

***

_“Not the murder in itself is despicable, as you shall take what you need, but if you dishonour the sacrifices in you by not living and living to your very fullest.”_

From the other Tom’s letter, whom Harry decides to continue calling “Thomas” as to make a distinction, Harry knows that one emphasis in the above mentioned statement is upon the word “need”. Even a murder, Tom believes, can be justified if it is _needed_ for one’s own survival. How, however, to distinguish a human need from a want and a luxury that can be forfeited?  

Harry remembers a muggle scientist by the name of Maslow, who developed a hierarchy of needs. It began with the most basic physiological requirements for food, water and shelter; to continue with safety measures like knowing one’s personal health and well-being are not in a permanent danger and be it by a lack of money, abusive caretakers or war. The third step Maslow calls “Love and belonging”, addressing the human’s desire for intimacy, affection and understanding. The fourth – the need for respect and self-respect. Any deficiency in these basic levels, Maslow assumes, leads to impairments in the person’s psyche. The last need – the need for self-actualisation, that is to live and live to the fullest of one’s abilities and potential, Maslow calls a superimposed one, but for Tom, it seems everything.

There is a variety of needs concludes Harry, because Harry too longs to be sated and safe, loved and self-confident and accomplished. However, problems arise in a situation, where the needs have to be actively secured, and be it against the wishes of others. Therefore, laws and moral rules essay to regulate social settings. For example, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant postulates his influential Categorical Imperative going along the words of _“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law”._   

According to Tom, Categorical Imperative supports statements like “Kill!” and “Live!”. Exactly because of its universality, however, the imperative cannot help Harry to concretise his behaviour in specific situations and in dependence on particular needs or the lack thereof, as it must govern on the most general level only. It explicitly denies the validity of an accessory and invaluable “if needed”.   

The Golden Rule of Christianity is instead deeply subjective – _“One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.”_

It is subjective, because any act originates from a personal preference. In case, Harry wishes to receive gifts for Christmas, Harry should spend the remaining week and half buying presents for all his friends. It is proactive, because Harry has to buy presents for others long before he himself may receive such. It is not reactive, as the fact Harry gives out presents does not necessarily make Harry receive presents in return. In fact, the Golden Rule defines neither what the actual consequence of Harry’s act should or would be. Harry may give presents for years without receiving a single gift back, and it would still correspond with the rule as long as Harry continues to desire.

Obviously, the Golden Rule is not the first choice if speaking of needs instead of wants.

In contrast thereto is the lex talionis, the _“eye for an eye”_ precept. This regulation is reactive, as it assumes that in fact, Harry has to give presents, but only after he received some himself.

Here, Christmas is a bleak business with no gifts altogether.

In the end, Harry has nothing but to trust his instincts to make the right choice.

_“If you wish to arrive somewhere, you need to trust Magic. Trust it as a special part of yourself. Trust it and it alone to solve your problem. It might”_

Yet, laments Harry, it is most difficult to even trust oneself.

***

This, and all this Harry writes.                            

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, the History talk is after F. Nietzsches' "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life" (The Second Untimely Meditation). 
> 
> And forgive me for the Categorical Imperative in three sentences. It is either this way or much longer... And while I try to actually stick with Nietzsche as my model of a young human genius slowly developing "beyond good and evil" and "will for power" ideas, enough is enough. -_- 
> 
> P.S. Personally, I thought the Tom-Thomas thing rather obvious, what about you?


	15. Christmas Mood

Christmas was coming. One morning in mid-December, Hogwarts woke to find itself covered in a metre high snow. It was certified Scottish snow, cold, wet, and exciting in its sheer unimaginable amount for someone previously confined to the British South, as Harry was. Miserably, Neville expressed his apprehension, as he always caught a cold midwinter. His grandmother then brewed a variety of family recipe healing potions, each one tasting abominably, that she forced Neville to drink every few hours. Afterwards little Neville rather watched the beautiful snowflakes fall through his room’s closed window, than risk a pair of chilled through feet.

Ron laughed, because the only times Ron contracted an illness, he was administered Pepperup Potion – quite yummy and with a funny effect of having steam to come out of the drinker’s ears. Ron’s father, who is working in the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office at the Wizarding Ministry, would take it a cue to tell Ron all about the wonder of muggle steam engines having enough power to move entire trains and ships. “You can use it to fly up the air or dive twenty thousand miles under the sea, and to make “counters” – extraordinary machines adding up long lines of zeroes and ones, which is why muggle banks are more efficient”, Weasley patriarch talked. More than his father’s tales, Ron enjoyed shaping monsters. With his siblings’ help, they did a passable garden gnome, as well as portrayed the family ghoul, as he howls in the attic. Ron’s family lives in Devonshire, where it rarely freezes and snow is uncommon. With the amount currently surrounding Hogwarts, Ron implies, they can sculpt a dragon.

Draco and Hermione lead discussion on French ski resorts, comparing landscape, atmosphere, what is a pleasing accommodation, and what the best pistes are. If Hermione is averse to flying a broomstick, it does not equal a general antipathy to perform sports. The rich muggle daughter challenges the son to the magical nobility to a race. Immediately Malfoy has his associates to look for an older student to conjure a pair of ski for Hermione and himself. Ron is assigned to guard Hermione’s school bag, Goyle takes Draco’s. A rapidly rising assembly discusses route and distance. Bets are made. Hermione’s face is a fevered pink, as she forces unruly hair into thick bun. Draco fastens two strips of wood to his shoes… Three! Two! Run!

As the opponents gather on speed, the crowd thins, everyone in pursuit of the best visibility, Harry sees a commotion to his right. Harry's heart beats in Harry’s ears, as Harry throws himself in-between Professor Quirrell and several snowballs, bewitched as to follow Professor Quirrell around, bouncing off the back of his customary turban. Behind the nearest snow bank, Harry detects the culprits – their flaming hair and matching grins unmistakable. “Stop” Harry cries, driven by a wild impulse to protect one of Harry’s first… friends. For years, Harry avoided trouble in order to safe himself, but suddenly the definition of Harry’s well-being expands. As Harry is no longer alone, he desires felicity for the persons special to Harry. “Stop”, Harry waves his arms, “Stop! That is no fun!”

Moodily, the Weasley twins emerge down the provisory road, causing the snowballs to fall. “Come on, Harry”, the brothers bemoan, “Don’t be a spoilsport”.

Harry narrows his eyes, standing short and imposing in front of Professor Quirrell – “That was no fun!

It matters not if you think it a harmless prank, as it seems not to cause any permanent physical damage at your victim. As long as you have not got their permission to assault someone, you are nothing but common bullies!”

Professor mechanically clears his cloak from snow, as the two Gryffindor boys argue the circumstance –

“George, he is accusing our sense of fun!”

“Yes, Fred. Little Harrykins being all sensitive.”

“Well, George, he is a Slytherin.”

“A slimy, prissy Slytherin.”

“Almost as bad as Percy.”

“No one is as bad as Percy”

“No fun.”

“No fun at all”.

Reaching a common conclusion, the twins are about to walk away, as Harry demands – “Wait!”

“I like good jokes,” Harry insists. “Take a party game where you have a bowl of sweets, not unlike the Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans, but a thousand times more awesome. Eat one, and your head goes invisible, another – you roar like a lion, whereas the third makes you covered with chicken feathers. The effects are short term, participation voluntary. Everyone is good friends and laughing. Laughter is important. I would sponsor something like this“.

“Chicken Feathers, Fred?”

“Rise of the Headless, George?”

“Of course, it would take highly advanced magic to accomplish, unlike bewitching the snow balls,” mentions Harry.

“He is challenging us, George.”

“Sponsoring us, Fred?”, and in unison – “We take you by a word, Harry”.

They depart. Harry laughs.

Professor clears his throat – “You know, I was to order detention. It would not do to leave your teacher dissatisfied.” Harry looks at Professor Quirrell, Professor laughs – “I am sentencing you, Harry Potter, to an hour of walking next to the frozen lake under my personal supervision, seeing that  you turned the generations of future Gryffindors into deliberate test subjects, and dare I say… defended your teacher”.    

“I cannot be sorry about it”, mutters Harry.

“But, really, chicken feathers?” Professor bends a finger –

“Come”.

***

Harry glows in the icy wind, as he carefully glides next to the elder man. With a swish of his wand, Professor charmed Harry’s shoes to withstand the pull of gravity, leaving only negligible dents in the metre high snow covering the floor and the trees. Seamless transition, Harry feels as if in a great hall, blinding white, no windows or ceiling. And right of him – polished dance floor.

“I am dreaming of the white Christmas…” the popular tune escapes Harry’s lips. Wonderingly, Harry asks – “There is a Christmas celebration to take place at Hogwarts. Why?”

Professor, his otherwise silent partner, raises his hand, as if asking to elaborate. “Christmas is a Christian tradition. Can wizards even be Christian? Is not magic assumed the result of a devil’s possession and alike?”

Professor is never short of an answer,

“Do not allow a sorceress to live, as the book of Exodus apprises,” Professor initiates. “From the rise of the Christian religion spell casting was banned; then disregarded as a superstition and the mere belief witches exist thought a heresy. Eventually, the Church recognised that we witches and wizards are. And as we are, we are the enemy of their God. You must be aware, that the Statute of Secrecy was the direct result of the centuries of religiously motivated muggle persecution…”

“I was aware of the witch-trials”, agrees Harry “I knew not, that “The Bible” explicitly condemns magic”.   

“There are several instances. Their God hates it to share his power. He is omnipotent, his subjects are faithful sheep. There is nothing good about sheep, but their obedience. You are correct, there is no reason for wizards to celebrate Christmas.”

They are two blots of darkness that walk the pristine white snow, the boy and his teacher. Black winter cloaks, Professor’s oriental headgear to Harry’s pointed hat, a step from each other. Urgently Harry interrogates of the wizarding feasts. 

"Winter Solstice", Professor implies. "When the day is the shortest and sun the closest, the magic gains on potency". Thus, a wizarding occasion worthy to solemnise.

“The northern people saw Winter Solstice the death and rebirth of their sun. In the course of the year, the sun god grows slim and pale, his powers lessen. Then, he rejuvenates.” Professor holds up a slim, pale hand.   

“Accessible magical strength is reflected in the sun energy. The near equatorial wizarding societies profiting from a forcible steady sun, had in turn to equilibrate the higher magical drain by the practice of sacrifice. At their heights, the wizard ruled Mesoamerican cultures regularly offered blood and hearts for the endurance of the daystar. One of the main Aztec myths has Tezcatlipoca, the initial solar deity, punish his people, who spoiled, only gave blood, where lives were due.”

“Tezcatlipoca?” not for the first time Harry dearly regrets Professor Quirrell’s refusal to really teach in their Defence lessons. Professor is the most interesting real person Harry knows. A person to take Harry from the glacial Scotland to the spicy hot mountains. To motion towards the static Black Lake, speak of mirrors as a gate to the otherworld, as the means to communicate with the gods and a tool of divination. A bowl of water, a hearth of fire; drawn from iron and obsidian; the sun itself are Mesoamerican mirrors, as are faces and eyes. Tezcatlipoca’s name equals “smoky mirror”, and a mirror he wears on the back of his head. He is the Lord of sorcery and the night, of rulership and pleasure and beauty. He is the “water-fire” – the God of War, and through war he initiates Change. He is the Enemy on Both Sides, as he of eternal youth, he alone decides upon the fates of the mortals, as they live and live nevermore, giving both reward and punishment, as he sees fit.     

“There is a particular celebration associated with Tezcatlipoca. For the course of a year a young man of a pleasing appearance and manners will be chosen to impersonate the god. He is the God for a Year.

 Around the end of May, I believe, playing flute, he, honoured, the God’s vessel, he walks the steps up Tezcatlipoca’s temple, where his body is seized and heart-soul offered to his God’s strength”. 

Next to a sleeping ash tree, the pair turns, tracing its way back to the Hogwarts castle. Harry wonders, if there are books on the Aztec faith in the library. Otherwise, he may ask Hermione to get him one from a muggle book shop. Hermione was meticulously fishing for everyone’s Christmas desires, now that they are soon to part for the holidays. Christmas…

“You know, I have this bizarre craving to receive gifts”, Harry laughs, fixing his gaze upon the approaching castle. “My muggle relatives were a little scarce in merry giving. So far I attained an example of Uncle Vernon’s old socks, a coat hanger. And aunt Marge, we are not related, but she offered me a package of dog biscuits. I ate them, you know. Did not taste exactly good, but hey, it was food!”

Turkey flavoured, low fat, no sugar, enriched in vitamins A, D and E, Calcium, Zinc. Only the best for Aunt Marge’s dogs. Can be preserved without the help of the refrigerator. Can be pocketed and eaten outside…

Following a sudden impulse, Harry locks his eyes with Professor Quirrell. Professor’s eyes bleed red.

“Those muggles abused you”, Professor bites with a winter wind.

“Ah well,” Harry says. Past is past, they fear magic, they know nothing of me, I forgive…

Harry confirms – “Yes, they did”.

***                                                                                       

Harry turns the pages of “Essays”, elsewhere is his mind. He notes, how the upcoming text considers Herpo the Foul’s doctrine. Because he turns the pages, one after another, punctiliously, he moves through the charmed book to see the after next hero, who is Salazar Slytherin. Herpo and Salazar - two men of questionable reputation. It should hold Harry’s interest… Harry wants to receive gifts.

Harry has to give gifts.

Harry stays at Hogwarts over the holidays. He writes his name in the corresponding list, Professor Snape passes to Harry after class, as the glasshouse Gryffindors, shivering, they flee the drafty cold dungeons. Draco argues, Harry is most invited to his family’s mansion – “You do not have to stay at school for Christmas, just because those muggles do not want you at their home”. Harry politely declines the invitation – his lodgings are such a significant improvement already, they should not prematurely alert Dumbledore just to raise Harry’s contentment to the yet unknown heights.

Ron expressed his pleasure to keep Harry company, seeing that he and his brothers are to stay too, because Mr. and Mrs. Weasley are visiting their second-oldest son Charley, who is working with dragons in Romania, and “theyhavenotgotenoughmoneytotakeustoo”.

Ron blushed. Harry felt a little thankful. Draco ever glows for having outrun Hermione by half a metre.

***

Presents are carried by the owl post. Living beings, owls battled the stormy sky to pass mail midwinter. Most had to be nursed back to health by Hagrid before they could fly off again, the exception being Draco’s Eagle Owl, seeing that Draco’s mother Narcissa was pretty apt at the largely disused household charms she warded her owls with. Stuck at Hogwarts; encouraged by the delivery reliability as well as Narcissa’s allegedly excellent taste and free time habits, Harry hopes to obtain Narcissa’s assistance to purchase his friends the under the fir tree gifts. Harry can be seen writing a letter, where he lists a number of three possible choices for each one of Harry’s friends. Harry rips the letter in two and sighs.

Despite Ron willing to give anything for a racing broom; Hermione’s passion for books, and Neville’s care for plants, and Draco’s immense fascination with hair products… What is to bestow upon Professor Snape aside from a vacation someplace warm and childfree? What is it that Professor Quirrell seeks, stutteringly, at Hogwarts? What is T.M.’s need as to this year’s Winter Solstice?

Harry is terrified by the diversity of his options, by Harry’s weak knowledge of the wizarding market, and of exact dimension of Harry’s wealth. Ordering Ron a broom, Harry might mortally shame Ron, whereas Draco shrugs at the sight of the luxury cosmetics because Draco is “worth it”. Draco pales because there must be a limit on a child’s pocket money no matter the child, on the appropriate exchange between friends.

Professor Quirrell drinks hot bitter tea. Whenever Harry despairs, Harry consults books. Professor Quirrell might enjoy a piece of cake to sweeten his tea. Books! The solution is Books.

***

Irma Pince is a frail dark-haired woman with a hooked nose. She is the Hogwarts Librarian. Just as her look-alike Professor Snape, Mrs. Pince is exceedingly passionate about the subject of her profession, less so about the added subjects. Plainly speaking, Mrs. Pince worships books and abhors students.

Harry is an exception. Harry with foregone green eyes. Harry, who caresses the worn out leather, as he reverently trades one page for another.  In this aspect, Harry is madam Pince’ other self. She is a vulture, but vultures are a symbol of protection and maternity. Madam Pince mothers Harry, as she guides him through the world of magical books.

Because Harry requires the advice on specifying the books he asks of Narcissa Malfoy to order, Harry turns to the resident expert and together they determine a book on Quidditch moves and on magical theory. On rare plants and worthwhile spells… A book for each one of Harry’s friends; and for Professor Quirrell a diary. Harry is shaking and giddy at the insinuation that Professor takes upon writing. It might be almost as good as “Essays”.

Then, Harry poses the other problem. Madam Pince watches Harry with narrowed eyes. Harry hurries to explain that he wishes to add a touch by his own hand to the books in question. A pouch with self-made biscuits, and No! Not to be consumed in the books’ immediate vicinity! For his baking endeavours, however, Harry requires a kitchen.

***

“Biscuits?” Madam Pince asks with a look of true disdain.

“Mmh”, affirms Harry, them be “Of the sweetest and most unhealthy kind”. A pleasure. A sin.

Madam scrutinises Harry’s tenuous form, sighs – “Do not we all crave for a taste of damnation?”

“Very well,” Madam speaks. She explains Harry the way to the kitchens – about painting and the fruits, yet insists that she too receives a set of pastry for her efforts. In his mind, Harry begins to see the fortunes of providing for Harry’s teachers as well as the more significant class mates aside from Harry’s best favoured group. 

Moreover, Hogwarts is taken care by house elves, and the castle’s kitchen is their exclusive domain. Rather than demanding the elves move aside to make place for Harry’s impetuous bakery, Harry should respect the elves’ sense of self and politely ask that they help and supervise and teach Harry. In no aspect is Harry’s experience superior to the house elves’ cooking skills, especially in a magic fuelled kitchen.

“They are all too eager to take care of you, too eager. You should not abuse their kindness”, the librarian directs.

“I understand, thank you”, is Harry’s response. Madam Pince smiles back, as she too is of uncanny ability to discern a fake smile from a sincere one.

***

Christmas is coming. The sun rises from beneath several folds of snow.

Dying sun.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S. [The second Card Set](http://merdesmiroirs.tumblr.com/post/47381100394)


	16. Dreams

On Saturday, the twenty first of December, Harry rode a carriage back to the almost vacated Hogwarts castle, having previously said a goodbye to Draco, Neville and Hermione. The train station in Hogsmeade offered a layer of thick snow, now imprinted with a series of children’s feet to emphasize the children’s paths. The road tore.

As Ron insisted to make the most out of the holiday and weekend, Ron slept in, allowing for Harry and friends to share a coach. It was driven by skeletal winged creatures, a hazardous medley of pterodactyl and horse. Flesh eaters. Silent. Invisible - at least according to Draco and Hermione. Solid to a hesitant touch. Neville calls them Thestrals. Thestrals belong to Death, as does Neville’s grandfather.

“Only those, who have seen Death…” mutters Hermione, wonderingly, astute. “What about television?   They show people die in both news and films. Things are exploding. There are bullets, car accidents, wildfire, epic battles. Have you seen “Bambi”? A whole forest catches fire and everyone runs and there are hunters, and hunters get the hero’s beloved mother… I cried.”

“I read that the consistent exposure to tragic events on television leads viewers to desensitise towards the general concepts of death and violence.  Makes you used that people die.” mentions Harry. “There must be a difference still, if you have to personally, intimately acknowledge death...”

And be it in murder. Harry rubs the back of his neck with a snow wet hand.

“What is a “television”?”

***

They talk. Light things, grave things, deep things. They wonder about a reality, where the thing you see is not necessarily the thing there is, yet at the same time you might not see what there is, unless fulfilling a specified condition beforehand.     

Given, Neville’s grandfather lived and Harry himself has not danced with death because of the flawed Dark Ritual, they might have never touched Thestrals, rather assuming the carriages are driven by magic, a non-manifest magic. That there is nothing to drive the carriages, because eyes surely would not lie and what I cannot see is not real.

Harry thinks that both Rowena and Salazar contested this conclusion by stating themselves – “Everything I see is unreal. The world is a lie”.

And the only thing true are the four skeletal winged horses and their elusive riders - Lords Pest, Hunger, War, Death.

***

Salazar Slytherin.  The moment Draco’s feet collided with the stone platform, he was approached by his two housemates - a Blaise Zabini and a Daphne Greengrass, because of the imminent Yule ball and further societal gatherings initiated over the Winter Holiday Season by their respective elders. It was glaringly necessary to forthwith go over the last minute details as to the colours of dressing robes and the variety of desserts. Draco expressed his sincere regrets, Harry cannot participate.  Draco rained a flushed “See you back in school”. Draco departed. Neville waved an enthusiastic “Merry holidays”. Hermione opened her more than it appears handbag, seeking a book.

Harry suppressed a sigh.

Harry was the centre of his group, the point of contact and the balance point. The moment Harry exits the equation, the road tore.

Harry remembers a recent conversation with Draco. Draco criticises Harry’s choice of friends. Draco should not be seen socialising with a Mudblood. A Slytherin is above fraternising with a Mudblood, and not to mention the Gryffindors.

“Exactly because I am in Slytherin” defends Harry. “I am risking everything being a Slytherin not only in mind, but openly, proudly wearing my green and silver. I have not contested the hat’s will. I have not begged to escape myself in order to fit with the general expectations ranging from me posing at least the symbol and at most the hero of the Light side, the public side. Albeit Slytherin being the Dark Lord’s home ground…”

“Well, scratch the Gryffindors. But the Mudblood…” tries Draco.

“But a Draco Malfoy! Your father may be in the minister’s graces, but how do you think may I ever pretend the “Harry Potter vanquishing Slytherin from within” part, if my first and foremost association is from the staunch blood purists line?

I need Hermione, even though and exactly because she is a different assortment of personality traits and abilities from yourself, I need Hermione as much as I need you.”

“I understand”, lowers his head Draco, face reflecting emotions, then nothing.

“See you back in school” spells Draco, turns. Hermione watches him leave semi-offended, a little yearning, clasps reading matter.

“I do not understand you Harry “, Hermione said. “You are kind and open-minded, where your sidekick is about the most bigoted, prejudiced jerk of the entire school”.

“Was Draco less than civil to you?” Harry frowns from his place in the alcove near the library.

“No, I… Not in my face. But I know what kind of evil things he believes in. He thinks me a… a… “Mudblood”, Hermione fights to speak the foul word. “Mudblood. Dirty blood. Just because of whom my parents are”.

“Hermione”, Harry offers the girl his smile. “I could not help but notice how the two of you group together within our group, whenever there is a task to attend for Cosmos. To begin with the perusal of “Magical Me”, the similarity in your interests, intelligence and manners brings you together despite this supposed prejudice. Tell me Hermione, if given a choice between Draco and Ron who you would rather work with?”

Hermione pursues her lips over just a bit too long teeth. “Ron”, Hermione attests, determinedly.

“Ron, because it is the right choice… or the true one?”

Hermione is hurt, because of a thing she cannot control, making her an unacceptable company for Draco, unless there is an excuse to consider. This excuse is Harry.

Harry is the melting point to Neville’s self-doubt and Ron’s bluster, Hermione’s know-it-all and Draco’s snootiness. There is not a group without Harry. Harry thinks.

***

Salazar Slytherin, the originator behind the pureblood supremacy and the man at the root of at least one problem, he despised Mudbloods.

Harry uses the word “Mudblood” if conversing with fellow Slytherins, driving Professor Snape into a shocked frenzy.

“I mean no disrespect!” cries Harry to the raging black eyes. “I see it differently, as I assign a different meaning to the word!”

“Mudblood”. According to Harry’s knowledge and T.M.’s narration many a culture includes a creation myth with humans being shaped out of mud. Magic forms its wizarding firstborns out of mud, where previously only a non-magical heritage was known. They are the first of their muggle family, not “dirty”, but new. The other, “pure” wizarding families are relatively older as to their presence within the magical world. First of all, Harry considers the terms a more fluent on the tongue version of the genealogical abstractions as to the respective muggle and wizarding heritage. First of all, Harry considers them words.

What is the meaning of words? Harry reflects upon a similar case from the muggle history. It is considered defamatory to call someone a “Nigger”, whereas the verbalization “Black person” is seen as socially acceptable. Etymologically however, both terms are the same, as “niger” is the Latin expression for black. More so the reference to skin colour is not per se segregating, as it addresses the only apparent difference. It makes therefore no predication as to the person’s personality and abilities, to their experiences and worth. Hermione is a Mudblood that is a magical firstborn, and the most talented witch of her generation. She is a friend.

Salazar Slytherin is said to have given the words an additional meaning, an influential interpretation that distributes honour and power in proportion to one’s ancestry. It is a daring hypothesis and one Harry needs to try to get to the bottom of if there be peace between Miss Granger and Mister Malfoy. Encouragingly, T.M.’s next essay is on the topic of this Hogwarts founder, and is it not T.M.’s distinctive feature to weave a new thread to resolve an old entanglement? 

Then again, Harry learnt more about a Tom than about Herpo from the text called “Of Herpo’s Advice”.  

***

_“My affection for him was immediate. I understood him as if I was the intended recipient of his work, as if he wrote it for me – and me alone. My fortune is to have known him, my path – to become his heir, his son and apprentice.”_

In such a vein T.M. expresses his love for Herpo the Foul’s book Harry has yet to find at Hogwarts library, despite the advantage Madam Pince’s search and summoning charms give him.

T.M. declares his respect of Herpo as he calls his legacy an honest, persistent and blithe one.

It is honest because Herpo wrote for himself, without deluding himself. It is persistent, as it has to be in order to prevail, and it is only in the victory that the true joviality emerges, T.M says.

If T.M.’s book on Merlin was his statement about Magic, the reflection on Herpo is Tom’s decision on those paths a magician must thread and the dangers to be aware of, thus the great sorcerer he becomes.   

As expected, there are scrapes of anecdotic information about Herpo to illustrate Tom’s points. All his reverence aside, Harry feels, Tom may use Herpo, but Tom does not need Herpo. What Tom requires is freedom. 

***

If each human is born unique, why is it, T.M. asks, that most in their thought and deed the herd follow? Embracing the ease and inaction, the illusion of safety and order, succumbing to their laziness, they are nothing but a fancy painted garment of public opinion, worthy of neither commiseration nor fear.

_“No one can make you a bridge and a boat to cross the river of life, no one but yourself. Others’ paths you may thread, but only for the cost of losing yourself. They are not yours! That is not you!_

_I alone am responsible for my being._

_Boldly, I shall flirt with my existence, endanger it, widen it, deepen it. Why to listen to opinions bound by place and time if a hand away them no longer validated?_

_I shall love only such I have loved truly, what I craved and what burnt my soul. I shall care for nothing but the laws of my own self._

_I am to rise as autonomous, uninhibited and obedient to no one as is primal Magic._

_I want to make the attempt to come into freedom”._

***

Harry’s breath stills, and his hands shake in the grandiosity of T.M.’s vision. To abandon convention and convenience, to break out of patterns of social norms and expectations - seeking the ultimate self, it is a battle. It is a battle, and it is a battle T.M. is too aware of –

_“Such is the generic peril of the special humans within the ordinary society: First, they find themselves bent. Second, they succumb to melancholy. Melancholy then leads to illness. And illness, it causes death._

_A society that abandons individuality in favour of normalcy, it forgives neither the one that clings to those features usually sacrificed, nor the one that dares to feel lonely and miserable within its close-minded boundaries. No, he must be a scoundrel, and if not openly, then in secret! His evil disposition must be the only reason he cannot honestly enjoy the social flatteries of social self-importance, society insists, and not, certainly not the mere fact he prefers the exhilarant company of his books to such of his contemporaries!”_

Tom felt... lonely.

Just as T.M. feels close to the old Herpo’s memoirs, Harry is similar to Tom. Harry is well aware of the time Harry had nothing but books to consider his friends. And of Harry’s friends – how many there are that actually trust and understand Harry? Harry and not the conglomeration of stereotypes Harry allegedly represents? 

Herpo, Tom writes, had not a single likeminded and true human friend in whom to find solace and merriment. He sought and he was disappointed, and someday he lived reclusively, lived through his work with his basilisk as his only company.

_“Not a single friend and supporter! And what is this abyss between one and zero! Who can say, that he knew a true loneliness, less he had not even one other being to himself?! But what is the true loneliness, if not a certainty to have the entire world to oppose me?”_

Tom felt hunted.

Therefore Tom fled into the labyrinths of his own mind, lived within his own mind, as if behind impenetrable Occlumency walls, where no oppression can reach.

On the outside Tom lived too.

Within a net of interpersonal relationships and countless regnant opinions, Tom perpetually appeared someone else. Misunderstandings to flawed perceptions and erroneous interpretations. Forced assimilation through half-hearted concessions and concealment. Everything that is not a steely “no” seems certainly a desirable “yes”.

Tom seemed desirable.

_“Worse might be death, but more than Death someone special hates the coercion to “appear”. Eventually, from the endless exasperation, from the eternal “Not Me!” he explodes the molten fire and the raging sea. He takes revenge in the most formidable words, deeds and expressions. Taking revenge on those who oppressed me... This, and not the other possibility - that I should bring my own ruin, falling into the pieces of myself...”_

Tom was lonely. There is nothing worse, knows Harry, than living without a single friend you can be honest and simple with, that there is neither deceit nor pretence.

_"Loneliness, it drives the unusual person into the very depths of his being, and to emerge back from the abyss, it equals a volcanic eruption, destroying others and destroying himself..._

_Unless, one decides to be blithe and to be victorious – a victorious God."_

 ***

It is a sign of the genius to long for the divine, T.M. notes, as only too well the genius sees his own limits. Yet there is no need like the necessity to grow, to grow beyond both the known and the probable, to grow into greatness. He fights against the opinions of his time. He contests everything there is that hinders his development into greatness. He is the one to make his own laws.

_“You are distraught and despaired, how lovely! There is something better still – be bad! The quickest path to perfection is suffering._

_They call such evil that undermines the conservation of their conveniences. Their conveniences they call a duty to humanity and “humanity”. To question and to deny they call an evil. So what!_

_Rather than to choose an easy happiness, I shall not be a victim to self-deception. I shall feel my life, and feel it through suffering, and I will be mine._

_I shall stand above good and above evil. My well-being is nothing to me, as are virtues and vices. I shall be Power. I shall know the true face of all things. I shall forget my humanity._

_Everywhere I shall seek lies and calamity, and I shall find the Unspeakable._

_And in light of the blistering red I this World overcome.”_

***  

Harry walked a long corridor, betimes brushing the fingers of his right hand against the cool, rectangular stones. There were no windows, the only visibility coming from the torches burning a red light flooding the darkness. Harry walked straightforward and then took a wrong branch-off resulting in a dead end. Harry re-traced his steps, his shoes touching the dusty floor in far-away echoes. He walked for a long time, leaving behind doors that never opened and paths that lead nowhere. At last, Harry stood in a big circular room, high as a church and on the far end there was a black door. A stream of blue light penetrated the door, as it stood slightly ajar and Harry watched it with an indescribable longing.  Next to the door, drowning the door in its shadow stood a dog giant and three-headed, its hot smelly breath making Harry shudder with fear and disgust.

The door was guarded by a Cerberus, the hell-hound from the Ancient Greek underworld, feeding upon the meat of the living beings. Heracles, a demigod, supplied Harry’s memory, defeated the beast with his bare hands, had him bound and harmless. Orpheus, a human, he lulled the dog’s alertness by playing harp as beautifully as no other. Out of the two talents Harry has not, what is the more feasible choice? Harry searches the room for either the musical instrument he could use, or perhaps a bottle of “drink me” to severely increase Harry’s height and physical strength. The room remains uncourteous, the dog barks.

Using his body alone, rhythmically tapping his shoes, Harry intends to become an Orpheus, as he enters Hades to free Eurydice...

Harry is Eurydice, as there is a soft flute play on the other side of the door, slipping through the opening and lulling the big dog’s heads into an easy sleep.

But if Harry is Eurydice, led through the door by another’s hand, Harry is a soul escaping Hades, escaping the otherworld and its mysteries of how a human becomes divine and becomes immortal. Escaping a certain death.

Carefully, Harry dances next to the dog’s three heads, as it snores and scowls. Harry’s hand on the door’s handle and behind the door there is another long corridor drowning in the torch light.

The music leads Harry through the maze of dark corridors as if Ariadne’s thread. Carefully Harry watches his steps, as the places grow older and decrepit. There are hungry creeping plants waiting in the dark corners. The other time Harry sees footprints the size of Harry’s body, clawed and heavy, as if stamped into the rock by a mountain troll.

Later still, as Harry follows the stranger’s song, the walls get covered in reliefs, grinding teeth and foreign. Harry detects scenes from his own life carved in the curling lines – Harry playing chess with a scheming Ron; Hermione’s hand flying up in the girl’s eagerness to solve whatever problem the teacher has introduced; a Quidditch play just won, the excited Seeker clutching in his hand a warm, fluttering Golden Snitch; Neville being scarred stiff by a single mention of his stern grandmother.

Finally the song stills and Harry enters the last room. He is no longer alone as Harry sees Professor Quirrell holding the flute and facing a great antique mirror in the room’s middle. Seeing Harry enter, without turning back, Professor flashes Harry a smile and the smile is reflected in the mirror. Harry smiles back, as the mirror is the door to the otherworld, and a door it works in the both directions. The mirror is the escape.

There is little more in the room, but shelves over shelves of dusty wood, whereupon small glass spheres rested. Some of them were dull, others glowed a dim inner light. They are labelled and Harry wants to go through every single one of them, and he wants not.

Professor Quirrell is still facing the mirror, as if determining how to open the door back into the world of the living. Good, thinks Harry, I am following you. 

Professor wears a mirror on the back of his head. No, - a face! The mirror is the face. And Harry feels dread. No! No! Harry feels black despair, for Orpheus is not allowed to take a look at Eurydice ere he leaves Hades.

The face looks at Harry. And the face is the mirror, as the mirror is the face. 

“No!”, screams Harry, as there is a black fire trapping them within the room, and the glass orbs shatter, as the fire licks at the wooden shelves, eating them. “No!” screams Harry, as the great mirror breaks in sharp-pointed smithereens, as there is no escape.

There is only Harry and Professor Quirrell with his two faces, together caught in the otherworld, forever caught in the darkness.

But is not Tezcatlipoca the God of the Otherworld? He may descend into a mortal’s body for the course of the year, but he cannot delude himself, as he cannot escape himself, as he is caught in the darkness.

But Harry is only a mortal, and it is rare for mortals to come into Hades. But was Harry even a mortal?

Harry survived a killing curse. Harry alone survived a killing curse.

Harry looks at the face that was a mirror, and the face glows back with a red blistering light, and the world overflows.

And Harry knew all was lost. Harry fell into blackness, down... down and down.

***

Dreams, Harry knows, are the result of brain activation during the rapid-eye-movement sleep phases.

Dreams were believed a measure of fortune telling, as the soul would leave its motionless body and rise to the higher spheres. T.M. assessed such an opinion a wishful thinking.

There are multiple hypotheses as to how dreams originate and the uses dreams serve. They are certainly based upon memories – recent and vivid; and thoughts the dreamer both most intensely occupied himself with prior to falling asleep, and those he pushed into the deeper subconscious avoiding to think about.

Dreams are as much a wish fulfilment, told in a language of picturesque and some argue - erotic associations, as it is a rehearsing of strategies to solve the current and upcoming issues in an environment not restricted by laws of time and space.

One such difficulty Harry tries not to dwell upon is the prophecy of which a line Harry knows. Having consulted books on this matter, Harry is aware that all prophecies are recorded and kept in the small glass orbs – glowing if unfulfilled, within a room in the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry of Magic.

Harry is furious that there is a prophecy about Harry, as such undermines even the illusion of the free-will Harry has. Ideally, Harry would like to destroy the prophecy determining Harry’s future, just as it happened in Harry’s dream. Harry read that many a prophecy stays unfulfilled if ignored by the involved parties. Destroying its physical shape however cannot liberate Harry since there are others like Headmaster Dumbledore and the Dark Lord himself that not only know its content but have acted upon it. The scar on Harry’s forehead is the direct proof that the prophecy is well activated. Destroying it now would leave only Harry in the darkness as to its contents, and in the greater scope things – at a clear disadvantage.

The other mystery Harry attempts to ignore is the three-headed dog in the Third Floor Corridor and the door it guards. The secrets Harry just pursued are about the Ancient Greek wizard called Herpo the Foul.

“Mystery” as a word also has its origins in the Ancient Greece, where it named the Eleusinian mysteries - a celebration to the Earth goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone, the girl, the chosen queen and consort to the deity of Underworld, Hades. These festivities therefore honoured the circle of life and death and immortality.

Harry thinks that it is Persephone herself, whom Harry played in his dream. Being lured by a flute’s sweet sound into the deeper darkness, Harry was to stay with the one man ruling it.

The mirror is a face. It is some days that Professor Quirrell told Harry about the Aztec religion. It is Professor Quirrell as well, who pretends to be a person he is not; who expressed his desire for Harry’s company; who tells Harry about Tom.

Tom was lonely. It is the one truth from Tom’s latest essay that haunts Harry. The face is the mirror. The power to escape underworld, the power to live is within the man’s own heart.

The power to escape loneliness is in the heart of the significant other.

A friend.

Neither Tom nor Harry can escape greater darkness on their own, but together they can domesticate darkness.

  _“I understood him as if I was the intended recipient of his work, as if he wrote it for me – and me alone. “_ Tom speaks about the man having long vanished within the Hades’ spacious fields. But Harry is alive as is Tom, and Harry feels the connection and Harry understands.

There is eternalness between having but a single friend and having no one.

Harry decides that he dreams to become Tom’s friend.

***

There is the one way to approach such a friendship, as Harry and T.M. communicate through letters. Harry is still waiting for Tom’s answer, and has to reply to Thomas. In addition Harry feels it right to befriend Thomas, as Tom himself was too quick to call Harry a “friend” for it to be genuine. Of course Harry hopes that Tom just hit it off with Harry, immediately detecting how good their fit is. Now that Harry knows how selective and exclusive Tom’s view of friendship is, such seems even less probable.

In this matter Thomas appears a more honest version of Tom.

Befriending Thomas...

Writing a letter that is no longer focused upon the cardinal magical theories Harry hopes to master, but the little things that make Harry frown and smile. The simple things Harry adores and hates. Banalities and large as the world hopes. Sharing true and personal information requires trust, and trust is the foundation to a friendship, as is sincere interest. And how is Harry to begin, as not to give Tom an impression he acts either out of pity or expedience. Harry dreams of a simple “I like you “to justify his offer of friendship, yet he fears to appear too needy and childish, too close and offensive.

Insecurities lead to avoidance. Harry peruses his Tom’s instructions on how to become a laughing, victorious God. How to rise as a great wizard within a society that according to Tom rather seeks to confine him within their own meagre limits, than serving a willing stepping stone of many to be of use to the one and the only man with a vision to surpass the very definition of their moribund era. For Tom, the aim of humanity is not the happiness and the well-being of the worthless majority, but in the becoming of a most unique and powerful, complex and terrific individual, him alone capable of pushing the very boundaries of what is human, evolving into a higher species, discovering a path to a worthier existence - and making the others follow.   

Eventually, Tom dreams to animate time itself - that within a living, spirited time Tom lives.

***

Harry continues on “Of Herpo’s Advice” to learn about the journey Tom himself would have taken. Knowledge refines predictability, and once Harry correctly estimates Tom’s reactions, he certainly takes the quill and writes Tom.

Harry learns that Tom probably does not work a ministry official or a teacher, as Tom abhors any profession that puts him into dependency from society and state and the public idiocy Tom rather sees his duty to eliminate.

In fact, writes Tom, a government and an educational institution give no favours to those they fear. The servant to truth and magic rather than the servant to the state, him they expulse and declare an enemy, who dares to judge and dissent. The state has no interest in truth, unless it is useful truth and a useful deceit. It treats magic as if something ludicrous and tamed, whereas magic is tremendous and almighty. No, working for a government exclaims T.M., it is to forsake the splendiferous freedom to follow one’s genius whenever he calls and wherever he leads!

Consequentially, Tom had to discover another, no further specified way to provide for his daily needs.

Tom travelled in the countries far and away, observed differences within humans, traditions and regulations. He disregarded the national borders, revering magic in all its forms - and not a wizarding government.

Tom albeit reluctantly walked in the muggle world, as personal experience alone allows for a reasoned judgement and an honest opinion; and knowing a world without magic aids to understand a world where magic is.

Tom studied as much as he could whatever he could. Tom’s greatest affront is his individuality, his freedom, and always freedom.  

***

When they left the dungeons at the end of Potions, they found a large fir tree blocking the corridor ahead. Hagrid carried it, and Hagrid walked them into the decorated Great Hall, where eleven other trees stood either covered with shiny icicles or blazing candles. Professor Flitwick let golden bubbles escape his wand to embellish the last one. Festoons of ever-green plants added to the festive atmosphere. There was just one day left until the holiday, and Harry has yet to write his letter – the fear of rejection is overwhelming.

The next morning, as several of Harry’s dorm mates attempt at the last minute packing, Harry has not written a word. “How do you befriend another person?” the question draws cycles in Harry’s mind and finally Harry snaps. He grips a quill in a sweaty hand and bites a biscuit. He begins.

***

“Dear T.,” Harry draws the arrow like rune -  

“Do you like sweets?

Yesterday I made the most peculiar experience of visiting Hogwarts kitchens for the first time. Receiving an elaborate instruction, it did not take me long to find the painting guarding the entrance. I do not think I have ever seen a creature as ticklish as the yellow pear that once touched transforms into a green door knob. I hope I did not turn the pear ill in the process.    

Three steps down and is not it a huge room? I understand the simplicity of the charms binding the tables in the kitchens to their counterparts in the Great Hall, yet I cannot help but wonder if there is a more space-efficient option available. There are in general a great many vacant rooms in Hogwarts, and I ask myself if it was an oversight on the part of the Founders; their hope that the wizarding population grows forcing more students and classes? Is such the evidence that the number of magical humans decreased over the past ten centuries?

House-elves, as they operate Hogwarts kitchens, are nice, certainly. Very helpful as well. Very obedient. They would do anything at all to please you without any concern for self-preservation and their own needs and desires. They do you a lot of amenities, but in turn they demand that you as a human being take over the entire responsibility to decide who they are, what they are, why they are. It is as if house-elves define their own existence by what their master says and this alone. I have never seen a creature as averse to the self-determination, as openly and absurdly happy in their slavery... They were household deities once, valiant and proud. Cohabiting with humans and revered by humans. Alas, no more.

Is this the future you have seen for the human race, abandoning their freedom out of convention and convenience? It scared me to stand in these kitchens and see how well and quick the elves worked, as if a thoroughly oiled machine. Watch house-elves employ magic, unique wandless magic and know them little more than tools in their masters’ hands. Their entire culture is build around subservience! They are a living proof that an individual does not require self-awareness to be efficient. The slavery is as internalised as these creatures even punish themselves whenever there is even a slightest suspicion of disobedience.

It scares me.

I baked these biscuits with the help of two dozen of overly eager house-elves and I wanted to send them a present to those I consider my friends. They are sweet and taste of happy mindless creatures. Thus, I enclose you a pouch of carrot and the stick - just as I continue to eat in the Great Hall, well-aware of the admixed spices. We have to kill in order to survive? The development of a unique, most powerful being is the greater aim of humanity, and be it by the cost of many? Ha-Ha. I am not a hypocrite, Tom. I see.

It scares me, Tom, but I see.

I see how real your words are. I trust you, Tom. I take your relentlessness over the fancy lies.

I... thank you.

I am not alone”.

***

Harry places the letter and biscuits on his pillow. When he departs to escort his fellow students off, it is there.

When he returns, his mind on the book, the continuation of the book, the letter is no more.

   

        

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The film, I originally wished Hermione to mention was "Titanic". Seeing how incompatible the girl and the high arts of divination are, a single look at the IMDB page had me to reconsider. 
> 
> "Of Herpo's advice" is based upon Nietzsche's third Untimely Meditation - "Schopenhauer as Educator". Nietzsche continues being a darling and writing things best fitted into a Tom's mouth. *laugh
> 
> I should be able to return to weekly/biweekly updates from now on. Next up is - "Forbidden Forest". 
> 
> Thank you very much for your support! See you soon...?!


	17. Forbidden Forest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was betaed by the wonderful [Cannibalinc](http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1786028/Cannibal-Incorporated) (whose stories I adore). Thank you so much, dear! <3
> 
> We are working to proofread the earlier chapters as well.

“ _That an event to be of greatness, a great performer addresses a great audience. Without the recipients, who can see and recognise to a satisfaction, for themselves worthy, even the greatest creativity and action evanesce within the bustling history._

_Salazar’s folly was to prematurely entrust his vision to those deaf and sightless. Salazar’s greatness – to have preserved his insight in both word and being, so that unmade can be Salazar’s weakness.”_

***

Having returned to Hogwarts on an icy afternoon, shivering, Harry is lured to discover the fire and sun of the Gryffindor Common Room. Seated next to Ron, Harry cultivates the Weasley twins’ style of organisational skills by paying close attention as Fred and George list both the pranks they have successfully executed to be reshaped into the wizarding joke articles and the general ideas for such. Taking note of the impressive number of powers and spells Ron’s brothers maintain, Harry mentally dedicates himself to keeping the twins dependent.

The day’s last coals glow in the Gryffindor dormitory, as gleams the face of the moon a perfect circle, as Harry reads the text called “Salazar Slytherin in Hogwarts”, seated on Neville’s vacant bed, in the company of Ron’s steady snores.

_“From the begin on, two passions warred in Salazar’s chest, two hearts he sought reconciled.”_

***

It is lavish, how the text was written, in stains of rapture and respect, yet Harry tastes the thickly veiled amusement and the grain of salt that linger between the lines. They are whispers from the faded away ink and rearranged letters, which hint at a “coward” and “weakling”. Suggest in a makeshift Tom-to-Harry translation that Salazar Slytherin was a magic addict in the same vein as some Muggles crave heroin.

It made his glory. It ruined his life.

Magic controlled him, as did his vanity.

_“First heart, it pulsated magic, faithful and true. His other heart demands mortal splendour..._

_Glory and Greatness!”_

***

_“The origins of the man Salazar are dark and turbulent. Lightning and wind and thunder, he seeks satisfaction. Power and exhilarating pleasure and finery – carnal, societal, knightly and of the sound mind. The other day - he is aghast, flees in oblivion and negation, lusts for renouncement. There is one star in the night, sad and glittering. There is only Magic, that is a selfless love and love faithful._

_He was driven into the unknown, unmeasured. His very different aptitudes quarrelled to break free, hostile, relentless, each craved fulfilment. Everywhere – shackles and pitfalls, and the misery of living. He suffers, longs, dies, knows danger and desperation._

_Not in his time and not for his existence, but ours.... His faithfulness gives us hope, plights salvation.”_

If there is one word to characterise Salazar’s life, it is restless; his being – covetous; his development – a vicious circle.

Harry mentally removes those allegories and expressions that feel all T.M. and probably not Salazar. He pictures a young magician, as he serves at a Muggle king’s court. Lordly, intelligent and ambitious, Salazar is met with reverence and wonder, drinks women and wine. As he wields wand and sword, sings heroic and gallant poetry, jokes amidst vibrant laughter... As he plots and ascends, Salazar the Beloved. As he is the first of the best... Salazar is restless.

And look! As if a phantom enchanting, alluring, Salazar detects the Dark Ritual. The sensation of almightiness, the rush of power exceeding the human means. He learns dissatisfaction with the “real world” of appearance and living. And he lives; how he lives!

Salazar’s existence is an endless alternation of places and comrades - of establishing himself in regard, pride and pleasure. Of deeming everything a sacrifice he offers to Magic, to the primal wonder. His life is a progression of gain and loss. What he loves most – his wife and house, his wealth and standing, Salazar offers to Magic. And which he renounced, he afresh craves.

He is a wanderer, stumbling from day to night and day again, incomparable refinement and enhancement, marvels, marvellous - and his fame grows. Time after time, growing in boldness and knowledge, resourcefulness and exorbitance, Salazar oscillates between magic and mortality. Agonised from the inability to reach a lasting satisfaction, he, exhausted, he longs for death...

_“Woe is me! How to be? How to bear?!”_

It was like replacing heroin with methadone that Salazar envisions Hogwarts.

In a world, where Muggles and magical beings lived hand in hand for centuries, Salazar imagines a purely magical environment raised by the will of Magic, dedicated to the teachings of Magic, and himself - a revered part of the whole.

Yet, despite his perfect magical surroundings, feasts and respect, Salazar feels his sanity slipping; and the urge to taste the essential. 

It was a choice between admitting defeat and determining something else to blame. A taint, making Hogwarts not as magical as it should be. A flaw gnawing at the very foundations of the magical energy, destroying its power, its purity...

Salazar asks himself if a culture, the supreme wizarding culture can be successfully learnt. If assimilation is the same, as a right by blood, right by nature. Salazar speaks - “Not at all”.

Salazar discovers the Muggleborns.

***

_“That for an act there be a receptive audience, we take into consideration. In both mundane and remarkable cases, the master is to address such followers that his genius satisfy. The day that Salazar spoke to his fellow wizards – his colleagues and students and the students’ parents, it must appear as if he believed in both the magnitude of his deed and the sublimity of the listeners._

_“You alone,” Salazar spoke, “You, faithful children of wondrous magic! You, compassionate friends of my particular creation! You alone, I appeal to, as I ask for your assistance that we keep this existence pristine and immaculate, even so - we only knew it impure and distorted.”_

_Salazar spoke._ ”       

T.M. implies, albeit having deduced the detrimental effect Muggleborns had on Hogwarts specifically and the Magic as a whole, Salazar overlooked that it was neither the time nor place to make his concerns known. His premonition being uncalled-for, Salazar but alienated the other Founders.  Rowena, who believed in mind, rather than magic. Helga, with her obsession with unity. Godric, advocating the movement, Godric spoke in favour of Muggleborns –

_“What is not, can yet come to be. As the wood burns and the coal burns, emerges Fire. The world is fire! There is not such a great difference between us!” Godric spoke._

With trembling hands, blazing in ire and longing, Salazar did as he has always done. He called upon Magic, he fled into Magic. He dreamt Magic.

Magic approved of his passion, his hatred, his dolour - adding a new layer to Hogwarts underneath the Black Lake.

_“There is a connective subsurface flow of ennoblement and aggrandizement calling to us, Salazar’s heirs, as we know his tongue and know to listen. As we stay faithful to ourselves and true to Magic. As we understand Hogwarts as our consecration. As we prepare to fight!_

_As we see in Salazar’s tragic artistry exactly the battle of the One against Everything which appears the impregnable necessity in might and law, tradition and agreement and the entire order of universe. As we suffer at the present day arrangements, their enmity and their weakness. How many onslaughts are you yet to withstand? Those, who defy you quietly, we are to drive into a chorus of outrage! The noblest discomfort is of the regenerating feat. The One cannot be more faithful than to sacrifice himself in the battle for Love and Truth._

_Much, which Salazar sought, was not in itself desirable. The One shall be sanctified by the Overworldly...”_

***

It was his last known Dark Ritual afore Salazar left Hogwarts. He renounced Hogwarts with a feeling of victory, but how long had it taken, wonders Harry, till the Founder realised the gravity of his failure, as there was nothing left between himself and his affliction?

Despite Salazar’s addiction tempting him to assign blame on a third party, the circumstances neither proved nor denied the validity of his claim assessing Muggleborns as the ones poisoning Magic. Neither is every change necessarily a good change.

T.M... Tom positions himself as Slytherin’s heir, thereby supporting Salazar’s theory. Yet, Harry doubts. It can be... expected of Tom to utilise Salazar, similarly to how he used Merlin and Herpo to forward his own ideas. Tom’s love for Magic is manifest. Anew, he writes many a paragraph praising, caressing the real, the sweet, the eternal. _“It is the enigmatic nature. An abyss, where power and beauty merge. Should not the true Magic shine, for the foolish mortals deserve it the least and require the most?”_

Tom insists upon the wizarding culture, demanding the socio-political state to originate and be rooted in magic and alone magic – and not the human inanity and lies.

Tom whispers the transcendental, as he equates history with a myth. With a story to shape and versify with love and devotion, yet the sovereign power of the maker. It becomes changeable and more pliable than a dream, as he composes entire eras to suit his purpose. The noblest of unease is the reintegration.      

If anything, it is... Tom.

***

The next morning Harry grudgingly descends into the Great Hall to absorb breakfast, feeling well a victim to this sensation, when one reads late into the night, not able to put the book away. Not capable of prying his eyes apart, Harry eventually decided to sleep for an hour or few, but no longer than six. He has yet to finish the book. There is no excuse to waste the persistent rays of sunshine, as they lick at Harry’s hair and face, no longer diluted by layers of lake water, but high and strong. Harry rises. Harry’s eyes tear and head buzzes, and he is so not awake. Harry flees the vicinity of Ron’s happy snores, clutching his schoolbag in the tired hands, and in breakfast he seeks vitality.

When Hagrid approaches and whispers in tangible excitement, winking a time or two, inviting Harry over, because, because... Harry thinks of a long walk through a crispy, invigorating winter landscape to reinstate his brain functions. Harry concedes.

Harry makes a run for the Slytherin dormitories, removing everything heavy and valuable from his persona, and meets Hagrid just outside the castle entrance. They hardly talk, because Harry has yet to concentrate. Hagrid visibly fears to spoil the surprise by allowing more words to escape his friendly, big mouth than initially intended, so Hagrid speaks not.

They walk all the way down the Hogwarts Grounds, where Hagrid’s wooden hut faces rows over rows of crabby tree bark - naked but for the crumpled red leaves. They go inside. There are stools and a wooden table, bundles of edible and curative herbs cling to the walls alongside a couple of the last year’s pumpkins. Excitedly, Hagrid directs Harry’s gaze past the hot candlestick to the hearth rug to the only armchair.

There, in a nest of dark linen, something stirs fretfully. It looks small and fragile, as Harry approaches slowly, cautiously, ready to jump back any moment. It has a shape of a crouched human child, as it moves agitated, curled in the armchair, lets out a whine.

Harry stands near enough to touch it. Harry pulls at the fabric, revealing a baby face. It is not exactly pretty. Its skin is a wrinkled red, as if flayed, and it has light blue eyes. Then, it notices Harry. It shudders and stirs more persistently, as if trying to free itself, and its eyes turn crimson.

Stunned, Harry glances at the raw looking thing, then at Hagrid. Encouraged by the keeper’s smile, Harry fights his discomfort. He stretches out his finger, drawing closer to the whimpering child. The feeling of dread overcomes Harry. Flying a step back, he escapes with his hand, as the being demonstrates six rows of shark sharp teeth, snatching after Harry’s fingers. Disappointed, the baby wails.

Hagrid falters at the heartbreaking tone. “Oh no, Harry. You have frightened him!” Hagrid proceeds past Harry – “Is not he beautiful? That’s right, ‘Corey. Mommy is back.” Hagrid sings a crude lullaby. The baby cries harder. It has a melodic voice, unlike Hagrid’s.

“Are you sure that you should... sing to him?” wonders Harry. “He... He might be thirsty...”

“Oh, yeah”, Hagrid exhales. The baby screams. Hagrid reaches for the shelf, takes a necklace of colourful glass. The child stretches its thin, long limbs, raw red with a soft looking fur. Fascinated, it holds the toy in its claws, twirls it in the light, croons softly. Hagrid beckons Harry closer – “Have it charmed unbreakable. Ye know.” Harry remembers the baby’s many teeth –

“What is he, Hagrid?”

“Got him from this Greek wizard. Knew, he ought be a beauty.” Harry accepts a cup of tea, as he sits opposite Hagrid.

“He’s a manticore. A man’s head, lion’s body and the scorpion’s tail.” There is no sight of the tail and little else to indicate the baby’s shape. Hagrid explains – “Does not like the cold much. Keeping little ‘Corey warm, ye know...” - and Hagrid gestures at the bundle of cloth the being is surrounded by.

A manticore, thinks Harry. The man-eater...

“Agni,” interjects Harry. “His name is Agni.” The baby looks up from the jewellery. Its eyes glint with a human like intelligence.      

“According to the muggle lore, manticores are native to India.” Harry declares. The tales of their sightings spread westwards to Greece and the remaining Europe, but we - the muggles have always doubted, if such creatures really existed. If unicorns were horses, and manticores tigers - still great and dangerous to a human and mundane...

“Agni is the Indian god of fire.” And fire, Harry thinks, is a right association to the red fur of the manticore, and its vicious nature. “He is the God of sacrificial fire. He forwards the wishes of human beings to the mightier realms...”

The baby pays them no attention, as it chants to the precious glass. Hagrid is moved to tears – “I knew it was the right thing. Wanted to ask you to become ‘Corey’s godfather.”

As his godson sings in every colour of the rainbow, Harry declaims with a solemn voice – “Welcome Agni, the messenger from the gods and the blessing! A long, enjoyable life is laid before you. Though your body will grow, retain you shall your childhood dreams and a playful spirit. May your fur come long and your sting sharp. May you find love in your family.”

***

As Harry devours his second cup of tea, Harry asks Hagrid a question – “According to the ministry classification, a manticore is the known wizard killer and impossible to domesticate. Why would Dumbledore allow Agni’s presence at a school, unless... you need him a guard? Clearly the three-headed dog is not enough to protect whatever is hidden under the Third Floor Corridor... ”

Hagrid catches on – “How do yeh know about Fluffy?”

“But Hogwarts is a magical school! It would be beneficial to have wizards enchant whatever traps they consider useful to seize the thief... There are traps, yes?”

“’Course all teachers helped, but...”

“What treasure there is, they need for a manticore to guard it...?” Harry fixates the Game Keeper with his stare. Hagrid, visibly shaken, struggles for composure...

“Listen to me, those things don’ concern yeh. It’s dangerous. You forget that dog, an’ you forget what it’s guardin’, that’s between Professor Dumbledore an’ Nicolas Flamel...

And little ‘Corey...” Hagrid, looks downside as if in shame – “I... wanted a manticore. And there was this opportunity, could not say no. Besides, like with every monster, you just have to know how to calm them down. What they like. Take Fluffy... No, no bad thought. But ‘Corey here – “and Hagrid motions to the fallen asleep baby, exhaling soft breaths, clutching its necklace...

“Agni is obsessed with precious gems, with their colours and reflections. You must learn what they love in order to tame even the most savage beast! To an outsider, it might seem impossible, yet it makes a perfect sense in this one specific case,” praises Harry. “And there is more! Because it is what he loves, he shall ask of it from his prospective friends and partner. We can become friends. He is so choosing a lady richly endowed!” And Harry laughs, warmth spreading throughout his chest at the sight of his godchild. Half an hour earlier Agni was making him afraid, but now that Harry understands the baby manticore. That Harry knows its heart’s desire. And Harry cares.

***

How strange, the workings of a human mind! Envisioning the winter break, he longed for solemnity of solitude. Once alone, walking the stony halls, threading the snowy path, Harry looks for a sign of life. The distant view of Professor Quirrell’s purple robes causes a wave of loneliness, and Harry follows.

Harry hurries on a crisp December midday, his feet swallowed by the snow, as the snow grows in amount, as Harry nears the Forbidden Forest. It is a hard walk. Professor glides. Harry cannot catch on, but it feels wrong to disturb the frozen air by crying. Harry follows.

They move inside. Soon the trees grow many, the light surrenders to darkness. If not for the faint traces of Professor’s boots, Harry would have lost his path, but as it is, he reaches a clearing. He stands behind a thick evergreen yew and listens to a conversation. It was a dialogue between the grim Professor Snape and the imaginary Professor Quirrell.  

“You don’t want me as your enemy, Quirrell”, threatens Harry’s Head of the House.

Professor Quirrell stutters – “I – I don’t know what you...” His form is shaking in a manner that makes Harry snort. After all – “We’ll have another little chat soon, when you’ve had time to think things over and decided where your loyalties lie.” Professor Snape snarls, throwing his cloak over his head and strides out of the cleaning, leaving the other to stand still, as if petrified. 

After all, there is no question. Professor Quirrell is true to himself and himself alone.

***

Professor awakes. He turns half a way and his eyes would meet Harry’s, if not for the yew tree branches, Harry shivers behind. Professor grants a half-smile, as if inviting Harry to follow. He goes on, deeper into the Forest. Harry steps over the tricky tree roots, rotting leaves. The trees stand a labyrinthine hall, an unyielding roof. Snow cannot descend. Darkness dwells here. Somewhere above, glow the stars. Professor halts. He radiates a steady flow of burning energy. He emits a cold blue light.

It is beautiful, as is the creature that answers the call. Tentatively, with shy steps, a unicorn enters the clearing and rubs its white mouth against Professor’s palm, lingering, as if in a kiss.

With his other hand, Professor pets the magical creature, his lips move in a whisper, yet the words Harry hears not.  

There is only one thing to disturb this embrace between the man and the unicorn, and it is the obsidian knife to emerge in the man’s hand.

The man sinks to his knees, knife in his hand, kisses the white fur, punctures the silver skin. The creature whines, as the man’s eyes haze with pleasure. He licks his lips. He encloses the wound with his lips, where the thick glittering blood swells. He sucks a mouthful and another.

He falls on his back, his face in pain, clutches the robes near his chest. Professor curls on the forest floor, crawls at his throat, and heaves, supported by a shaking arm. He throws up silver. He coughs up red. His hands are covered with the creature’s blood, his own blood, as is the earth next to him. Harry wonders, if there is a curse, befalling whoever dares to hurt a being as good and pure a unicorn is.

The unicorn... stays close. Gently, it licks at the man’s cheek, as if sympathising with its assaulter. As if there is an understanding between the man and the creature.

Professor sits up, breathing heavily. Professor laughs a high cold sound amidst the red bolts of vomit. He laughs – “Of course! How could it be otherwise! You are ruthless! You were going to make it difficult!”

Professor gets on his knees. As if against a force, he stands up. Almost falls, because of a fresh bout of coughing. He stands, and his robes sway in the windless winter air. His eyes are red.

He holds the blade high above the unicorn. Unnaturally calm its blue eyes. It is ready to bleed as if a fly in a spider’s net. Bleed with a silver tear, evaporate.

Harry rubs at the wetness, staining his cheeks. What Harry witnessed seems both frightening and intimate. He was a silent spectator. No more.

No more!

There is a black blade high above the unicorn. It is a docile, noble creature. It stands wounded next to the wounded man. It is about to die.  

It is not something Harry allows. As long as Harry can take influence on the world surrounding Harry. There must be another way. Harry moves, and Professor moves.

Harry opens his mouth to scream and to shout. Professor halts, the blade moments away from the white neck. He looks at Harry and his lips break the silence –

“Harry, run.”

***

The forest is awake. Harry hears howls of bowtruckles and the rustle of bugbear’s tail, and more sounds he cannot identify. Next to an owl’s hoot and a crumbling leaf, Harry recognises the werewolf’s growl, as if replicated from the horror films Dudley watched.

There is not much a distance between the werewolf’s canines and Harry.

Harry stumbles a step forward. He is met by Professor Quirrell’s long stride. Professor’s hand falls on Harry’s cloak. There is a feeling, as if being squeezed through a tube, swallowed, and thrown back up again. Harry’s spine smashes into the tree bark, his arm twitches painfully. Next to him, Professor Quirrell regains consciousness. Still in sight, a snowy creature, hurt and proud, opposes the man-wolf with its horn and hooves. The battle won’t last, apprehends Harry. Professor’s eyes are clouded with pain. Professor surveys his wand, clutches his wand with a bloody hand. Breathes in. Exhales. Rises. Rises at a man’s height. Rises above the last year’s grass, as Professor’s feet abandon earth.  Eyes meet.

Hungry the man-wolf howls, as a white blur vanishes between the trees. There stands nothing between the beast and the boy, unless...

“Won’t it be terribly anticlimactic?! The Boy-Who-Lived died a werewolf’s meal...” Professor speaks with a hoarse whisper and seizes at Harry’s arms.

They fly.

***

They flee along the lower tree branches, and as comfortably, as a wolf snapping allows. They attempt at a friendly banter. Harry implies –

“The full moon, it was last night”.

“I was not aware that you actually pay attention in my lessons.”

“I read up.”

“Ah yes, I had my own share of pathetic teachers back in school. Your textbook too is pathetic.”

“What about the werewolf?”

“Natural shifts in magical strength over the year. Take the Winter Solstice, and you have the twenty four hours of werewolf activity. Add the last night’s full moon, and there is an exceedingly hungry werewolf jumping at our feet. By the by, it is also a particularly nice time for certain rituals...”  

“Earlier in the clearing...”

“As you so delightfully interrupted my work, yes”.

“But...” Harry pauses, seeking courage – “You did not truly intend to kill the unicorn, did you?”    

Professor’s eyes flash angrily – “You are neither aware of my needs, nor the options open to me.”

Professor clarifies – “Basically, I was.”

***

“I was not aware that wizards can fly – without a broomstick, I mean.”

“They can’t.”

“How do you subdue a full-grown werewolf?”

“With a wand.”

Professor Quirrell’s answers turn short and strained. Even through the layers of cloth Harry feels the tension, where Professor’s arms hold Harry. There is little in common between the power Professor emitted as to summon the unicorn, and the sweat covered man, pale and shaking and close to the ground.

Wizards cannot fly, not without the broomstick. In addition, they use even faster means of transportation be it for a short or a long distance travel. Portkeys, flooing, apparition. Now that Harry’s partner labours to breath, thus not keeping up with a conversation, Harry’s mind races through the last hour’s events. How, according to Harry’s books, Professor Quirrell’s first thought was to escape via apparition, only to find themselves against the next best tree in the immediate vicinity of the clearing.

Professor’s second idea would be of a spell. Harry knows that adult wizards of any skill favour non-verbal spell casting. Like with the elusive thestrals – if Harry cannot see a wand’s work, it does not equal the absence of the spell. On the other hand, the lack of any consequences to the assumed wizardry suggests that the spell failed.

They are in an unknown part of the Forbidden Forest, a first year student and a Professor. They are chased by a rabid werewolf. The student is not aware of any unusual talents on his part. The Professor is neither capable of magical escape nor defence, presumably a result of the backfired – interrupted, Harry’s subconscious provided, but Harry pushes the thought away. It was the right thing to happen. He won’t accept...

As a result of the backfired sacrificial ritual the only measure of hope there is, is Professor Quirrell's wondrous ability to stay in the air unsupported. Given the general condition of Professor Quirrell, it is the good thing the werewolf has suddenly ceased his hunt and vanished in another direction, thus a few heartbeats later, as Professor collapses in the thicket, taking Harry with him, they are safe.  

There is something moving over there... Something big. Something big is amidst the branches of ancient trees, them bound by white hairy threads...

Oh no, no, no, - hums Harry’s mind, as Harry’s lips keep close as not to additionally notify the creatures of their presence.

Clicking noises... Harry plasters himself across the motionless form of Professor Quirrell, readies his wand. Harry’s attention drawn to the quiet puffs of air Professor exhales. Harry rapidly remembers any spell he learnt, and discards.

Eyes everywhere, and legs. Black giant bodies. Shining, black pincers, clicking in excitement, dripping with venom.

Oh no, oh no.

“Strangers”, the spiders sing with the clicking voices. “Kill them. Kill them!”

Long, hairy thread adheres to Harry’s shoulder. They speak with a human’s tongue. Their moves cleverly coordinated. Harry has long overcome his fear of spiders. They are pets and comrades from the cupboard under the stairs.

There is nothing Harry can think of to placate the spiders. Neither a friend, nor a worthy enemy, Harry poses a tasty fly. We kill in order to live. Harry prepares to fight.

To die fighting.

It is hopeless.

There are too many of them. There won’t be an explosion of warmth, light and friendship. Harry does not know how. Harry reacts to the smallest disturbance, but it is only Professor Quirrell, sitting up. Eyes unfocused -

“Wh- What is g-g-going on?”  

Then, he sees.

Professor sways not unlike the spider webs, of which there are countless. Harry’s “Lumos” is a single candle, easily extinguished. Harry’s...

“Professor!” Harry calls for attention. Professor reverted to his public persona, but it must be enough. “Professor, how do you do fireworks?!”

“F-F-fire?”

The silence before the storm is about to end, the tension at its highest. The spiders ready to pounce.

“W-we should flee. G-give me your a-arm. Ap-parate...”

“We cannot. You are hurt. Fire?!”

“C-cannot?”

In the twilight of the forest, Harry decides, Professor Quirrell looks like a lost child. It is terrible to comprehend, and Harry overlooks a murmur of “He is a great wizard and I am weak” in favour of memorising Professor’s hand movements and a phrase in made-up Latin.

The spiders, having surrounded their prey, are no longer content to feed of the prey’s fear.

Harry slashes and twirls his wand and screams, and twists as to narrowly avoid a massive black body colliding with the ground.

His wand emits golden sparks, which are in no way reminiscent of the spell Harry aims for.

Harry rolls on the floor, the one man standing. The spiders favour the struggling meat.

There is an increasingly lower radius where to move, unless you claw yourself into the ground, acquire a pair of wings.

“Come” is the dry whisper of an angel, and an arm encircling Harry’s waist. They rise like a dying sun from under the trees, and up, up. Up!

Leave wooden earth behind.

See patches of sky.

Touch uniform sea of blue.

Move beyond the edge of the forest.

Glow like a shooting star.

Explode in two pieces on the bank of the Black Lake.

Professor and him.

***

Harry looks at the sun, as it drenches Hogwarts in a red low light. Albeit covered from head to toe in the warm, water-repelling winter clothes, Harry shivers. Harry guesses the time that passed since they fell from the sky.

Harry thinks of the forest.

Harry recalls Professor Quirrell’s glowing form, and how Harry was targeted by the wolf and the spiders. Harry cannot shake the feeling that he alone was in danger, or was Harry the danger?! A clueless intruder to the ancient dark forest, where Professor flawlessly fits, yet Harry...

Stretching the numb appendages, Harry welcomes the sight of the homey castle and lake welcoming Harry with the white arms, softening the fall.

Harry crawls to where Professor Quirrell lies, pale as the surrounding snow in the grip of exhaustion.

Harry leans close to the balding blond hair and closed blue eyes – “Thank you for saving me,” Harry smiles.

Pushes from his hand the woollen glove, encircling Professor’s wrist. There... there... Harry strains to feel the heartbeat, his eyes glued to Professor’s face, whose blood-stained lip twitches, as if in pain.

Professor is moving. Professor lives.

Professor’s hand is warm, too warm. The heat is a possibility of fever. Counting the heartbeats, Harry with his over hand, bare as well, reaches out for the man’s forehead. Carefully, Harry covers white skin - first cold, then burning.     

A strange smell reaches Harry’s nostrils.

Professor’s lips move, what is he saying...

Harry’s hand closes on itself, as suddenly there is no pressure to withstand its grip, as where once was Professor’s Quirrell’s wrist, there is air and ash.

Jerkily, as if burnt, Harry withdraws his other hand from the man’s face or the lack thereof... As everything is black flame and crumbles.

“Foolish boy” howls the wind with a voice no longer there.

“Your parents gave their life for you, so you can live. Not the murder in itself is bad, but to waste the sacrifice by not living to your fullest...” Tom said.

Harry sits within the white snow next to the scorched remains of his friend. The one, Harry could be bold with, true with, free with.

The man, who saved Harry’s life.

Harry does not approve of abrupt endings. Harry is selfish. Harry craves more than a moment of devotion.

There is the finality in death Harry no longer accepts.

Among ashes, there is Professor’s obsidian knife. Its black blade still shows traces of the unicorn’s blood.

Blood to blood, determines Harry, slices his arm.

Rips cloth, skin and flesh.

Harry is in pain.

Harry falls.

***

The first step is to know thyself.

The second is to resolve all doubt – what you need; what you need to offer.

Open thyself to Magic. She is the only home.

Her alone you love. Hers alone you are. In light and darkness you are. In giving and taking you are. The Dark Ritual is the love relationship between the magician and magic.

The third step is to pass her judgement.

***

At times like these, he forces himself to see a single thought, a single ambition, a single act.

He walks a wet, windy street, where muggles imitate the world they do not believe in.

“Nice costume” cries a boy, and cries more, running away. His hand twitches. A movement - and he could terminate the foolish child. Another – he could glue the boy’s mask to his face, turning the boy a monster, yet barely change the boy. There are countless opportunities to enhance the play, little twists and turns he savours – but not tonight.

He caresses his wand with strong fingers, as he glides the dark street in the company of sparse rain, reminding himself of his triumph. Of his purpose, his power and rightness.

He was suitably angered, as he learnt of the prophecy. He wanted to see it happen – the destruction of this one, inexplicable danger. At times, he allows some of his early insecurities to bleed through, as if to remind the two of them, who he is, what he is.

Then, he saw it for the opportunity it was.

His own prophecy to break and devour.

He threw a coin, infused with his will and magic. It suggested the Potter boy. 

For once, he welcomed the old man’s meddling. His targets went into hiding, a little wary but otherwise lazy and well-fed on the sweetest honey, as not to attempt anything drastic.

He could use the sight to find them, his might – to tear down their defences. Stand tall and exposed and living thunder... Sometimes it is hard to abide by his own rules. But plays of love and trust and betrayal he sees more interesting than an exhibit of raw force. This is a distinction between the two of them.

By tonight, enough he had waited. Threads are woven and mingled. Tonight, he triumphs over the foolish mortals.

He is a writer, and only then – an actor.

***

It was disgustingly easy in hindsight.

The green light flashed around the room and she dropped like her husband. The child had not cried all this time. He could stand, clutching the bars of his crib, and he looked up into the intruder’s face with a kind of bright interest, perhaps thinking that it was his father who hid beneath the cloak, making more pretty lights, and his mother would pop up any moment, laughing—

The child’s mother... Her body dropped, she is standing. Slightly see-through and violent, she steps over her fallen body, as she reaches out for Voldemort.

She approaches leisurely, like the faded memory from the days as he was one, and there is a danger, a real danger, he cannot yet name.

She comes closer, a smile upon wet cheeks, hair deep red and frightening. He knows to cease the nonsense, dissolve her shadow in the otherworld’s salt. He forces fury inside his wand. But move he cannot.

She is a step away. He needs to diminish her presence – he is shaking green light. It goes right through the woman’s figure and fails to be.

He is taut and tense and not yet moving, as she crosses whatever space and curls into his body, marring his neck with sweet breath and shudders in ecstasy. For a moment it seems, as if she shall kiss him, a statue of silent wonder, instead she places lips against his ear, she speaks – “Forgive me.”

Her hand enters his chest and pulls.  

At last, he cries in a horrendous understanding.

There is little else than to cry, as a pain, indescribable pain and terror claw at him, as her hand vanishes inside his chest and tears.

She looks not at him, as he crumbles, torn into wind and dust and pain. He is nothing, Nothing!

She... She turns over to her child, humming a silly tune, in her hands winds a part of his soul.  She turns over to her child, smiling, smiling, presses the snake against the boy’s forehead, enclosing his soul inside the boy... She calls - “Protection”.

He sees flashes from the pyramidal temple; a relief he studied during his travels one time long past. Sees a noblewoman holding her child. A lightning bolt adorns the baby’s forehead, instead of a leg the boy has a serpent. It is the last imagery before he shatters. It shatters with him.

The pain is so terrible.

It tears at his soul and he no longer remembers...

The child begins to cry...

And his scream is Harry’s scream, and his pain is Harry’s pain...

Harry runs through the icy water. He rips through the veil.

Harry stands on the other side, he hurts and he needs –

“Please, come back!”

Then, there was darkness.

***

He reaches out for Professor Quirrell’s soul. It burns a scorching crimson colour, as if blood and the phoenix fire. It is too bright for Harry to look at.

Blindly, Harry stretches his hand out and beckons. First there is cold and silence. Then, there is warmth, and it seeps towards any edge and line of Harry’s body, and Harry knows no more.

***

_There he stands, surrounded by an every day’s calamity, by meddlesomeness of appearance, society and state, he - the creative genius. He is awake, because others sleep. He belongs to the insomnia, he - bright and self-conscious. He stands in-between ghosts and sleepwalkers, all - mundane, uncanny. He counters with a cynic’s liberty. He burns for Magic. He dives after the happiness in unity. All weakness and humanity and the lost memories he gives to the skies, he gives to love, as he offers himself to love. He returns a God. –_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A supermassive writing block later, a chapter. 
> 
> In theory, all events described here take place on Sunday, the 22nd of December 1991, a Winter Solstice. According to folklore, Winter Solstice was also the time that werewolves traditionally assumed their beast forms instead of Full Moon. 
> 
> Hagrid is rather infamous for keeping about three hundred Blast-Ended-Skrewts in Year 4, the Skrewts being an experimental breed between a Firecrab and a Manticore. Taking in account the number of Skrewts and the fact that a Firecrab’s best feature is its shell covered with precious gems, I present you with one half of these beastly Romeo and Juliet - namely a jewels obsessed male manticore baby in Hagrid’s care. 
> 
> The mentioned temple relief is of Mayan/Aztec origin and belongs to the cult of one Tezcatlipoca...
> 
> “Salazar Slytherin in Hogwarts” after F. Nietzsche’s “Richard Wagner in Bayreuth”.
> 
> Next up: Ch. 18, “Desire”.
> 
> ***  
> Thank you so much for reading and appreciating! <3


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